What’s the story with passing your Credit Card Charges onto your patients?

The process, commonly referred to as “Cash Discounting” is all the buzz amongst Credit Card Processors. What many merchants are doing is Surcharging the consumer’s credit card charge by a certain fixed percentage (usually 3%). If you check your credit card receipt and there is a separate line item for the credit card fee, you are paying the freight.

Here are the Issues:

  1. In Massachusetts and Conecticut this process is illegal. It is perfectly acceptable to “Reward” your customer for paying with cash (a discounted price) however you may not “Penalize” that customer for paying with their credit card (the penalty being that 3% surcharge).
  2. Ignoring the legality of the issue for the moment (for it’s only a matter of time until Massachusetts and Connecticut change their laws), as a Practice / Business one needs to be cognizant that by surcharging your customers, you do run the risk of offending some of them and sending them to your competitor down the street who continues to absorb said charges.

Notwithstanding the legality, many Credit Card Processing Sales Reps are pushing this option. Be extremely leery of falling for the temptation to use this option. You do not want to be the recipient of a “Cease & Desist” letter from your State Government.