Fee settings

Under Fee settings it is possible to create card fees, also called Surcharge, on selected cards. The Surcharge is a way to pass on fees to the cardholder that the merchant normally pays to the acquirer. The fee is created when the acquirer pays the cardholder's bank an intercharge fee and passes the fee on to the merchant. Card fees are regulated in the EU, so you need to be aware of which cards you can charge card fees on when selling in the European Union.

The rules in brief

According to the EU PSD2 directive and local legislation, merchants are not allowed to charge fees on private cards issued within the EU/EEA. Corporate cards issued within the EU/EEA and all other cards issued outside the EU/EEA can be charged. Card fees are allowed in Denmark, Norway, Finland, Germany and Switzerland. Companies can also make a payment with a private payment card, in which case no fees may be charged (OnPay automatically identifies whether a payment card is private or business based on the setup that we go through below).

Note: The above information is a brief summary of the rules, which is not legally complete. You must ALWAYS make sure to keep yourself up to date with the current rules.

Availability in OnPay

The Fees feature is available for:

  1. New transactions
  2. New subscriptions
  3. Recurring (subsequent) payments on stored information (Subscriptions)

How to do it

Click on Fee settings which you find under Settings in the left menu to go to the overview. At the top of the page, available acquirers are shown for which you can set up fees. Click on the Edit details button:

Fee settings

Then click the Create a new fee rule button and set up the card fee:

Create new fee

  1. Select which cards the fee should include.
  2. Select country and currency.
  3. Select card type and issuing conditions.

Click Create to proceed to setting up the fee details:

Enter values

  • Minimum amount: Enter the amount limit for the fee. For example, if you have entered "500" in the specified currency, the fee will only apply to amounts from 500 and upwards.
  • Percentage fee: Enter a percentage to calculate the fee. For example, if you have entered "0.15" (0.15%), the percentage fee of 500 will be 0.93 incl. VAT if the VAT is set to 25% during creation.
  • Fixed transaction fee: Here you can specify a fixed fee, e.g. 0.75, which is applied to each transaction independently of the percentage fee.
  • Minimum fee: Enter the lowest value before VAT to be charged on the transaction (excluding fixed transaction fee).
  • Maximum fee: Here you enter the highest value before VAT on the compounding fee (percentage and fixed transaction fee).

Remember to save your changes.

Use the Add interval button to add multiple intervals on the same fee: Add interval

Helper tool

On the right side you will find a helper tool that can be used to test the fees. In this example, we have filled in the fields and get a match on one of our fees marked in green:

Helper tool

As the help text on the page also indicates, fees are marked in green because:

  • The payment amount is greater or equal to the minimum amount.
  • The card brand is set in the fee rule.
  • The card country is set in the fee rule.
  • The card currency is set in the fee rule.
  • The card type is set in the fee rule.
  • The card corporate setting matches the corporate setting in the fee rule.

An example of the calculation is shown in the section below and gives an overview of how the fee works. The calculation is broken down as follows:

  • The calculated fixed fee (inc. VAT).
  • The calculated percentage fee (inc. VAT).
  • The calculated total fee (inc. VAT).
  • Adjusted total after applying fees.

Calculation in payment window

When a fee is applied to a transaction, the Card fee and Total fields are displayed in the payment window. The card fee is indicated with ? until the card is identified: Empty payment window

The card is identified by the first 6-8 characters and then the fee calculation will be shown in the payment window: Filled in payment window

Test mode

If a transaction is set up as being in test mode and the card fee is enabled, the fee is always set to 0 when the transaction amount is less than 5000, and always set to 100 when the amount is greater or equal to 5000. This means that you need to create a transaction of 5000 or more to activate the fee when testing your transactions.