Surcharging and dual pricing

Merchants can pass card costs to payers in two ways. PayLynks applies the rules; your integration doesn't calculate anything.

• Surcharge: a fee added to credit card payments only, capped at the lower of the card brand cap (3%) and the merchant's cost of acceptance, never on debit or prepaid cards, not in states that ban it, and only after the 30-day notice to the acquirer.
• Dual pricing: prices are shown as cash prices; card payments are a set percentage higher (up to 4%).

Checkout, invoices, the virtual terminal and voice payments show the disclosure and the exact total for the card in hand before charging. The charged total and its parts are on the payment intent as amount_total and fee_lines. Refunds return the fee in proportion.

Bank (ACH) payments never carry a surcharge, and under dual pricing they pay the cash price; see Bank payments.

The rules are versioned data: each payment records the version it was priced under as pricing_rules_version, and a rule change is a new version rather than a code change. These rules are a draft pending legal review before live mode.