The legality of surcharging keeps getting more confusing. Recent reports seem to indicate that New York’s law prohibiting surcharging was overturned. Unfortunately, that overstatement confuses the actual status of the statute. As you may recall, the card brand rules allow merchants to add a fee on top of the regular price for goods and services, …

In March 2017, the United States Supreme Court issued its opinion in Expressions Hair Design v. Schneiderman, on a challenge to New York’s law prohibiting credit card surcharges. The Supreme Court held that the law restricts merchants’ speech by banning surcharges while allowing cash discounts—two similar business models that differ only by how a merchant’s …

It’s hard to be a cash-only business, especially when businesses are expected as a matter of course to accept credit and debit cards. But processing fees can make merchants hesitant to sign up for transaction processing services, and many payment processors want to offer merchants the ability to pass processing costs through to the customer. …