Can I surcharge card fees in Florida?

Section 501.0117 of the Florida Statutes says a seller "may not impose a surcharge on the buyer or lessee for electing to use a credit card in lieu of payment by cash, check, or similar means." A violation is a second-degree misdemeanor. The same section says it "does not apply to the offering of a discount for the purpose of inducing payment by cash, check, or other means not involving the use of a credit card, if the discount is offered to all prospective customers." The section appears unchanged in that respect in the 2026 Florida Statutes.

In Dana's Railroad Supply v. Attorney General, 807 F.3d 1235 (11th Cir. 2015), businesses that had received cease-and-desist letters from the Attorney General challenged the law. The Eleventh Circuit held that § 501.0117 "is an unconstitutional abridgment of free speech," reasoning that banning a surcharge while allowing an economically identical cash discount regulates how prices are described, not what they are. The Attorney General asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review it; the Court denied the petition on April 3, 2017.

What that leaves: the statute was never repealed, and a federal appeals ruling is not strictly binding on Florida's state courts. We found no Florida bill since then that repeals or replaces the ban. In practice, merchants in Florida surcharge under the card network rules below, and many use a cash discount instead, which the statute permits.

Federal law doesn't ban surcharges; the debit restriction comes from network rules. What federal law does protect is the cash discount: card issuers can't stop a seller from offering a discount for paying by cash or check (15 U.S.C. 1666f), and card networks can't stop a discount for using a particular payment method (15 U.S.C. 1693o-2(b)).

A change is pending. In November 2025, Visa and Mastercard signed an amended settlement with merchants that, in Visa's words, gives merchants "more options to surcharge," and is "subject to approval by the court." Check the current rules with your processor before you start.

Visa's Q&A says that to run a cash discount correctly, a merchant must show either only the card price for each item or the card and cash prices side by side, and the card total "must be displayed in full" rather than reached by adding a card fee. Otherwise it "may be treated as, a surcharge and subject to Visa's surcharge rules."

On the Paybrain Register, the register in the Paybrain Mobile app and the web register, card pricing works the cash discount way. You enter your regular prices, which are the cash prices, and set a markup of up to 4%. Every tile, checkout button and receipt shows the card price; a customer who pays cash gets your regular price back as a cash discount, shown on their receipt. Nothing is added to a card payment at the end.

A few Paybrain payments do add a fee as its own line: online invoices, payment links and QR checkout (your markup plus any flat fee), Tap to Pay taken on an invoice or payment link in the app rather than at its register, and membership dues when "Apply to memberships" is on. Those are surcharges, so the network rules above apply, including the 3% Visa cap and the credit-only rule. Whatever you choose, post a clear sign at the counter that card and cash prices differ.

How dual pricing differs from a surcharge, with the math: What is dual pricing? Setup steps are in the docs: Card pricing.