Payment Fees

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Can you use Fees?

Although Visa®, Mastercard®, Discover and American Express® support various fee programs for most business, certain exclusions apply. A business should check with their respective merchant services provider to inquire about qualification for each of the available consumer card fee programs.

Source

All fees are configured on a conversation by adding adjustment rules into the context of a conversation. The rules vary in terms of conditions and what values are supported, based on the type of fee being applied. An Authvia implementation specialist will be happy to help you understand our capabilities and when each fee is appropriate.

Convenience Fee

A convenience fee is a charge passed on to customers for the privilege of paying using an alternative (more convenient) payment method or channel that is not standard for a business. For example, a business which normally accepts payments online could asses a convenience fee for TXT2PAY transactions.

There are a handful of other requirements governing how convenience fee's are communicated to customers, but we take on the burden of adhering to those requirements for you.

The example below describes how you would define an AdjustmentRule on a conversation, which would apply a $1.00 fee (amount is in cents), when the payment method (tender) used is a credit card.

{
  "amount": "10.00",
  "description": "Anvil",
  "adjustmentRules": [
    {
      "type": "convenience",
      "amount": 100,
      "when": {
        "type": "CreditCard"
      }
    }
  ]
}

🦉 Creating a payment conversation with a convenience fee

Learn how to implement convenience fees in your payment conversations to pass processing costs to customers.

View Tutorial →

Service Fee

Service fee's are similar to convenience fee's but are restricted to merchants with specific merchant category codes (MCC) and the service fee must be a separate transaction from the payment. Contact your payment gateway/processing partner to help you navigate if you should apply a service fee, vs a convenience fee.

There are a ton of deviations from the convenience fee requirements, not all of which we support yet. Let us know if you think you're eligible for Service fees and we will help you out.

The example below describes how you would define an AdjustmentRule on a conversation that would apply a $2.25 fee (amount is in cents), when the payment method (tender) used is a credit card or ACH.

{
  "amount": "10.00",
  "description": "Anvil",
  "adjustmentRules": [
    {
      "type": "service",
      "amount":225,
      "when": {
        "type": "CreditCard",
        "type": "ACH"
      }
    }
  ]
}

Surcharge

A surcharge is when a merchant passes the cost of accepting a credit card back to the consumer. A surcharge is percentage based (not flat), and can only be applied to credit cards (not debit cards).

While we do support surcharging, it is not legal in every state (though that list is shrinking), and the rules which regulate surcharging can be a bit complicated. Please consult your payment gateway/processor to help you navigate if they are the right solution for you.

Below applies a 3% surcharge to all credit cards that support surcharging. A surcharge must be greater than 0% and less than 3%, represented as a decimal. Knowing when a credit card can be surcharged is based on the 'bin' of the card. This is taken care of by our system for all cards added by customers.

{
  "amount": "10.00",
  "description": "Anvil",
  "adjustmentRules": [
    {
      "type": "surcharge",
      "amount": 0.03,
      "when": {
        "type": "CreditCard",
        "isSurchargeable": true
      }
    }
  ]
}