Surcharge
An additional charge added to a payment to cover the merchant’s processing cost.
A surcharge is an additional charge added to a payment to cover some or all of the merchant’s processing cost, typically for credit cards or commercial cards. Where surcharges are allowed (and where they are not) is governed by national regulation and scheme rules, and the picture varies by region and card product. Mis-applied surcharges are a fast route to disputes and regulator attention.
felloh runs automatic surcharging, the legal way.
Detect eligible card brands, apply the permitted surcharge and recover the cost — with the surcharge decision and customer-facing display logged against the booking.
What it means for travel businesses.
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 handles it.
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.
The Surcharging area in the dashboard configures rules by BIN, region, scheme and brand, and the pay checkout applies them at the moment of payment with transparent display to the customer. The Transactions view records the surcharge against the booking, with the applied amount and the rule that drove it visible inline.
For travel businesses using surcharging as a deliberate cost-recovery lever, the rules apply consistently, regulator-side risk stays low, and the recovered cost is visible at brand level. Customer-support questions get clean answers, and dispute exposure drops because the surcharge was transparent at the point of payment.
Related terms.
Merchant Discount Rate (MDR)
The total fee a merchant pays per card transaction, expressed as a percentage of value.Read termGlossary termInterchange fee
A fee paid by the acquirer to the issuer on each card transaction, set by the scheme.Read termGlossary termCard scheme
The card network, such as Visa or Mastercard, that sets rules and routes card transactions.Read termGlossary termBIN (Bank Identification Number)
The first digits of a card number that identify the issuing institution.Read termGlossary termCompliance
The set of legal, regulatory and scheme rules a payment process has to follow.Read termSee how this works around your bookings.
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