Merchant's ask me all time if they should surcharge and my usual answer is..."It depends."  For the most part I think is not widely accepted by the general public and you may risk turning a customer off by surcharging.  I understand that the only reason a merchant wants to surcharge is to be able to off set their own payment processing expenses, but I still think is is better to raise your prices on the front end then it is to try to compensate as your customers go through the check-out.  The customer doesn't understand that you are just trying to minimize your expenses so you can continue to stay in business, they see it as though you are charging them to pay and sometimes this can be a large enough turn-off that they may never return. In my opinion it is not worth the risk of losing returning customers. The only time I condoned this is when the merchant is in an extremely competitive market and they can not raise their front end prices on products and services without losing business to the competition so they must do it on the backend/check-out.

 


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