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Surcharge ban under PSD2 - What, why and when?
Surcharge ban under PSD2 - What, why and when?

Explains the scope of the surcharge ban (covered by PSD2) for EEA based businesses that came into effect on 13th January 2018.

Jen avatar
Written by Jen
Updated over a week ago

The Second Payment Services Directive (PSD2) introduces rules for online payments and financial services in Europe.

This article focuses on the ban on surcharges for payments made by card (one specific consequence of PSD2).

This article covers:


The surcharge ban

The PSD2 surcharge ban (from January 13, 2018) applies to all EEA businesses and prohibits extra fees for debit or credit card payments. Each country decides how to implement and define the rules.

In the UK, the Treasury expanded the ban to include PayPal transactions. Overall, it includes payment via all major card companies (e.g. Visa, Mastercard, etc.).


What should I do?

If you're a business within the EEA and you're charging additional fees for online payments, you need to ensure that you turn this off and stop charging fees to comply with the law.

However, there are two possible 'workarounds' below.

  1. If you only accept online payments and not other non-card methods such as cash, cheque, or bank transfer, you can still apply fees.

    • This is not considered discrimination against card-paying customers since all customers are charged the same fee.

  2. You can impose a fee for both online and offline payments to ensure there is no discrimination against card payers, as everyone incurs the same fee regardless of the payment method.

💡 Important note: We do not currently support the ability to add fees to non-card payments (offline). However, you may wish to increase your ticket prices to include the fee.


 

Switching off your payment fees on Bookwhen:

  1. Select Settings from the left-hand menu, then Payments

  2. Select Edit next to your gateway:

  3. Select Edit:

  4. Then untick the box for Add an online payment fee to bookings?:

✨ Select Save to save your changes.


Can I increase my ticket prices to compensate?

You can increase your ticket prices to compensate for both online and offline payments.

However, please consider the following:

  • Covering the fee completely is difficult due to the precise charging structure of payment gateways (flat fee + % per transaction).

  • Achieving a balance between covering costs and avoiding overcharging customers can be a challenge, so please proceed with caution when doing this.


💬 Any questions or feedback? There are two ways to get in touch:

Thank you! 🕺

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