Surcharging

So I walked into a Dr's office yesterday and there is a sign saying that as of May 1 they are adding 3.5% whenever a patient chooses to pay with a Credit or Debit card. This doc happens to be a personal acquaintance so I choose to do a little calm education by sharing one of many blurbs I found with a simple web search stating very clearly that surcharging is not allowed on Debit, even Signature Debit. She was quite surprised and said her processor assured her it was allowed. She reached out to them and got back more BS trying to justify their position. Now sadly as often is the case with legislation there are unintended consequences and since most merchants pay a blended rate they don't get the benefit of reduced costs on Debit cards, their PSP does. Arguably if the PSP didn't get that extra margin all the blended rates likely would have risen in recent years. Stay tuned as this story unfolds. She asked me to talk to her PSP. p.s. they offered me the option to pay with Venmo without any surcharge which I did. A day later - I spoke to their PSP who is actually an old school ISO. The person I spoke to seemed genuinely surprised that he and his company did not understand the rules. He promised that they would try and find a POS solution that would not surcharge Debit cards.