Surcharge

Why it matters in travel

Travel businesses operating across the UK and EU work within strict surcharge rules: consumer credit-card surcharging is banned in the UK and most EU markets, while commercial-card surcharges are allowed under conditions. A clean surcharge engine is one that knows the rules per BIN, per region and per channel and applies them consistently.

Surcharge mistakes are visible and disputable in a way that other payment errors are not. A consumer who was surcharged on a banned card type can complain to the regulator; a commercial customer surcharged at the wrong rate has clear grounds for a chargeback. The reputational cost of getting it wrong on a few thousand bookings can be larger than the surcharge revenue it produces.

The travel businesses that surcharge well use it as a deliberate cost-recovery lever on a narrow set of allowed cases, applied transparently and visible to the customer before they commit. The businesses that surcharge badly treat it as a default revenue boost and find themselves on the wrong side of either a regulator or a scheme rule change.

How felloh helps

felloh runs surcharging that respects scheme and regulatory rules per BIN and region and keeps the applied amount visible against every booking so finance and customer support can answer questions cleanly.