Merchants should take note that certain types of payment surcharging are banned from January 13, 2018 under the new payment rules in Europe (“PSD2”).
While this is mostly relevant to merchants accepting payments from consumers (“B2C”), some aspects of the PSD2 surcharge ban also apply to certain business-to-business (“B2B”) payments.
The surcharge ban under PSD2 aims to protect consumers across Europe by prohibiting merchants from charging consumers additional fees for making payments by certain payment methods. For example, merchants, including ticketing, travel and food delivery websites, are no longer allowed to charge consumers additional fees for paying by debit or credit card.
The B2C surcharge ban applies where:
the consumer’s bank or card issuer and the payment provider of the merchant (i.e., Stripe) are both located in the EEA; and
the consumer makes a payment using a debit or credit card, or an EUR payment using direct debit or credit transfer (i.e., a SEPA payment).
Even if the surcharge ban does not apply, the amount of any surcharge imposed cannot exceed the cost incurred by the merchant in accepting the particular payment method.
The scope of the surcharge ban may vary from one country to another – for example, in the UK, HM Treasury has extended the ban to include B2C payments made by payment cards issued by three-party card schemes, such as Amex, as well as other means of payment, such as non-EUR direct debits, Apple Pay and PayPal – but we’ll continue to monitor the implementation of the surcharge ban (and PSD2) across Europe.
Some aspects of the PSD2 surcharge ban also apply to B2B payments. The surcharge ban applies to EUR payments made by business customers using direct debit or credit transfer (but not payments made using a corporate credit or debit card), where the bank or card issuer of the business customer and payment provider of the merchant (i.e., Stripe) are both located in the EEA.
As with B2C payments, even if the surcharge ban does not apply, PSD2 limits the amount that merchants can surcharge businesses to the cost incurred by the merchant in accepting the particular payment method. If you’re a platform or marketplace, the surcharge ban does not impact the platform or application fee you charge, provided that these fees are not differentiated by payment method.
If you have any questions about your local market or would just like to know more, reach out to Stripe Support.
In addition, if you would like to learn more about how PSD2 impacts marketplaces, see our guide.