Offset the costs of accepting contactless and credit card payments
Wave goodbye to the bank fees for credit card and contactless payments
Do away with bank fees
Recover your cost of acceptance for contactless and credit card payments by adding a surcharge to your customers transaction.
Let your terminal do the work
When a contactless or credit card payment occurs, the terminal automatically applies your pre-programmed surcharge. No manual calculations or guesswork.
Open your doors to more customers
Give your customers more choices to pay, by accepting credit card, payWave, Tap & Go, Apple Pay and Google Pay on any NFC enabled card or device - all without increasing your costs!
Offer a truly contactless payment experience
Remove the manual prompt to accept contactless surcharge. Let customers see the surcharge on screen and simply tap to pay. No need to touch the EFTPOS terminal!
Transparent and fair payments
The surcharge is clearly displayed on the terminal screen before the purchase occurs and also printed on the transaction receipt.
Quick and simple to set-up
Surcharging on your terminal is customisable, with options to suit your business needs. Simply set up your credit card and/or contactless acceptance with your merchant bank. Then just call us to get this activated free of charge.
What is Surcharging?
A surcharge is a small fee that a merchant can legally add to a credit card or contactless payment to cover the cost of acceptance. This is done simply by adding an applicable fee to the customer’s transaction through your EFTPOS terminal.
Surcharging can offset the costs of accepting certain payments. It can save your business thousands of dollars in the long run.
A surcharge can be a win-win for both New Zealand businesses and consumers. It can help keep things fair, allowing small businesses to provide more payment choices and keep prices down.
Make surcharging work for you
You decide the surcharge amount
Set a chosen percentage per transaction
Offer a truly contactless experience
Remove the manual prompt for contactless surcharge
Transparent to customers
Display surcharge value separately on customers receipt
Seamless POS integration
Works seamlessly with POS systems that support surcharging
Contactless Surcharging
A contactless surcharge is a fee you pass on to your customers to accept contactless payment. This includes any contactless card or mobile device (smartphone, smartwatch) that is tapped, hovered or waved over the terminal to make a payment.
The surcharge should reflect your cost of acceptance and is configured into your EFTPOS terminal.
When your customer makes a contactless payment, the terminal identifies this as a “scheme” transaction and automatically applies your chosen surcharge. The amount is added to your customer’s transaction and is visible on-screen, as well as the printed receipt.
Credit Card Surcharging
A credit card surcharge is a fee you pass on to your customers to accept a credit card payment. It should be reasonable, in line with your cost of acceptance.
Adding a surcharge with your Smartpay terminal is easy. You don’t have to calculate for each transaction, as the terminal does this for you.
When your customer swipes or inserts their credit card and selects “credit”, the terminal automatically applies your chosen surcharge to the transaction. This is displayed on the screen and the printed receipt.
If they tap or wave the same credit card on the card reader instead, the terminal would consider this a contactless transaction.
Contactless and credit card surcharge guidelines NZ
The Retail Payment System Act 2022 governs contactless and credit card surcharge laws in NZ which are overseen by the Commerce Commission. These provide guidelines to NZ merchants to ensure the payment system operates in the interest of both businesses and consumers.
Done right, surcharging is simple, transparent and fair to all. As a merchant, you have obligations towards your customers when surcharging. This allows them to assess if they would like to pay via an alternate payment method or accept the surcharge.
Know when you can surcharge
You can only surcharge those payment methods that incur an additional cost of acceptance for your business. You cannot surcharge cash or EFTPOS (debit) transactions as they incur no additional cost of acceptance.
Establish your surcharge amount
You can only charge a reasonable surcharge fee to cover the cost of accepting the payment method. Your surcharge fee cannot be higher than the cost of acceptance.
Surcharge collection
The surcharge amount must be collected as part of the same transaction as it applies to. It cannot be collected separately or in cash.
Surcharge receipt
The customer’s receipt must display the surcharge amount specifically. We take care of this for you by including this on the transaction receipt printed from the EFTPOS terminal.
Surcharge signage
You must display signage at the point of sale and your premises to indicate to customers that a surcharge is applicable on certain payment methods. You must also declare how much that surcharge will be.
Downloadable Surcharge Sign
Smartpay provides customisable signage for customers to download and display at their premises.
You can download our surcharge signage by following the link below.
Learn more about our EFTPOS solutions
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What our customers have to say
Frequently Asked Questions
When a customer pays by credit card or a contactless payment method, the terminal identifies the payment method used and automatically calculates the programmed rate (that you have advised us to set for you). This surcharge amount is added to the customer’s payment amount on the terminal. The customer accepts the surcharge and completes the payment with a tap (contactless) or PIN (insert/swipe). It is hassle-free without the need for you having to calculate this for each transaction.
Surcharging is available on S920, S800, S900, S80/S300, S800/S300 terminal models. Once you have credit card and/or contactless payments activated on your merchant facility with the bank, get in touch with us to set this up for you. It is quick and free of charge to set-up and with our 24/7 support team on call, you can set this up anytime!
If your terminal is not included in the list above or if you have any questions, please feel free to contact us on 0800 476 278.
Yes, you can also request to activate surcharging on contactless payments if you are accepting these.
By using the “Shift Total” option, you can get a printed record of the transactions that have incurred a surcharge and what this amount is for each transaction. We recommend that you print these off daily or weekly to keep track of this. The “Shift Totals” reports on credit card (insert/swipe) and Contactless surcharges separately.
Credit card surcharging is applicable on payments made on Visa, Mastercard, UnionPay AMEX, Diner and JCB cards. If the customer inserts/swipes their credit card and chooses the “credit” option, the programmed surcharge will apply.
Contactless surcharging is applicable on payments with any NFC enabled card or device. The card is not inserted or swiped in the terminal and, if the transaction is below $200 a PIN is not required for authorisation of the payment. These include all cards and devices with payWave (Visa), Tap & Go (Mastercard), Apple Pay and Google Pay.
Enquire about Surcharging today
For Existing Smartpay Customers – Surcharging is free and available with any Smartpay EFTPOS machine. Send us your request to activate surcharging by clicking the button below and one of our team will get back to you. Or call us on 0800 476 278 when you are in front of your EFTPOS terminal to activate this free of charge.
Not a Smartpay Customer? – Let us help you by talking through your options. Call our sales team to discuss an EFTPOS solution that suits your business. Or get in touch using the button below and one of our sales specialists will call you back within one business day.