Frequently Asked Questions

As Mitchell Katz, spokesman for the Federal Trade Commission, said in May of 2011: The Dodd-Frank law prohibits a payment card network such as Visa “from inhibiting the ability of anyone to provide a discount for payment by cash, checks, debit cards, or credit cards. Neither surcharging, nor a cash discount is illegal.” 

Additionally, Federal Law states that businesses are allowed to assess a set customer service fee across all products and payment types. By using our Cash Discount program you meet the standard regulations set forth by all major card service providers, State Law and Federal Law.

No! Surcharging is adding a charge only for customers who use a credit card, and is not currently allowed in ten states. This is a program that offers customers a discount who pay with cash.

No! The signage that we provide states, "All Prices Posted are the Cash Price." This means that your prices are fine where they are at and no adjusting or reducing is needed. The equipment will automatically add the service fee to your cash price if they use a card. 

Not entirely. This program has been around for years. Ever pay a utility bill over the phone? Remember when there was a $3.95 fee to use that service? Or, ever get your tabs at the DMV and they charged you a service fee to use your card? 

Those examples are this program! It has just become more available to private businesses. 

The short answer is no. While nobody wants to pay more for goods and services the fact is people are becoming more and more aware that businesses pay a lot to take cards. The result of the increasing costs of taking cards is that you need to raise prices to cover the costs. Your customers will appreciate the fact you're keeping your prices low. 

Additionally, people have become used to paying $2 to $4 to take cash out of an ATM and the service fee that you have is minimal compared to that.

What if instead of raising prices you could lower them or do a promotion to reward your customers? By eliminating the fees from taking cards you can do that! 

No. We provide training on how to present this to customers to keep them happy and to get them to pay you in a different form. We also provide training on how to use the equipment so that using the program is a smooth transition. 

Yes! With our Cash Discount Program we are able to take any card brands and debit cards. There are no additional charges to you for any of them. 

In most cases we have found that the equipment that people have is out dated or not compatible with automatically calculating the service fee. We prefer to send you brand new equipment so that we know it works correctly. 

In some cases we are able to work with your POS provider to integrate it directly into your current system if you use a point of sale system.

You do still receive a bill. However, unlike most companies we collect the service fee added at the end of the day so the only thing you will ever see taken out of your account is the monthly fee. We do not bill you for the rates and fees like you are being billed now. 

When a fee is incorrectly applied to a transaction, any additional fee charged to those consumers using a credit card is labeled a Surcharge, that is expressly forbidden by Visa, Mastercard, and the processing provider without taking very specific steps. By utilizing us to implement an automated Cash Discount Program we make sure that you are in compliance with current regulations.