There's no longer a blanket ban, but there are still obstacles:

* Mastercard and Visa don't allow debit card surcharges, even if the transaction is run as "credit".

* American Express only allows surcharges if they also apply to all other forms of card payment. This includes debit cards, which interacts problematically with the previous rule; if you want to do a card surcharge while accepting all three card brands and remaining compliant with all their rules, you have to apply it only to Mastercard and Visa and not American Express, even though American Express is the most expensive.

* Several states still don't allow card surcharges, and others don't allow merchants to profit from surcharging (which makes it hard to advertise a uniform surcharge) or have regulations about how prices have to be listed if a surcharge is going to apply.

Rules like these don't make it impossible to do surcharges while remaining compliant, but they make it significantly harder than it'd otherwise be. I think this is the primary reason why most merchants still don't do them. (Well, that and that their competitors don't, but that could explain either equilibrium.)

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lotsofpulp 6 days ago | parent [-]

A cash and debit card discount is the same as a credit card surcharge, I fail to see how this qualifies as “significantly harder”.

Target, one of the largest retailers, offers a 5% discount for debit. Comcast, Tmobile, Verizon, ATT, Lumen, utilities, governments, and insurance companies also routinely charge extra for credit cards (or discounts for debit/cash).

Daycares charge more for credit card, as do doctors’ offices.

At least half the gas stations I see have long had higher credit cards prices.

Not to mention contractors for physical labor.

The change since 15 years ago is stark. If I wasn’t getting a minimum of 3.5% cash back on my purchases, I would use credit cards a lot less.

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ameliaquining 6 days ago | parent [-]

Huh, I didn't know that about Target (perhaps because I've lived for years in a state that doesn't allow this, so I can't get the discount where I live).

I did know that recurring utility-type payments, and payments of more than a couple thousand dollars, tend not to accept credit cards or to charge a lot extra for them, presumably because it's not as costly for them to make their users eat the inconvenience of setting up ACH payments. Most merchants can't get away with that. I've also seen it for gasoline but chalked this up to gasoline being an unusually fungible and high-demand commodity.

Do you know how they're handling the American Express problem? I don't think I've noticed a big contraction in how many merchants accept it.

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lotsofpulp 6 days ago | parent [-]

> Huh, I didn't know that about Target (perhaps because I've lived for years in a state that doesn't allow this, so I can't get the discount where I live)

I linked to a website that shows the federal government specifically allowing it. You can definitely get a 5% discount in your states’ Targets for paying with a debit card:

https://www.target.com/circlecard

> Do you know how they're handling the American Express problem? I don't think I've noticed a big contraction in how many merchants accept it.

It’s not a problem. Refer back to the federal legislation that prohibits payment card networks from dictating cash and debit card discounts.

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ameliaquining 6 days ago | parent [-]

Oh, this is a specific co-branded card, that's a different thing and one I've seen a bunch of places.

It seems pretty uncontroversial on the internet that American Express has this policy, and I can't find anyone alleging that Dodd–Frank prohibits it. There is a class action lawsuit against American Express alleging that the policy is illegal (https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/legaldocs/zdvxngqeovx/...), but it makes its argument on antitrust grounds and does not cite Dodd–Frank—which it would surely do if there were a plausible argument that Dodd–Frank prohibits this. I don't know exactly how this squares with the text of the FTC's business-guidance page, but that page is a concise summary and doesn't get into all the details of the law, so my guess is that the situations it applies to are somehow different from what American Express is doing.

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lotsofpulp 6 days ago | parent [-]

It’s not really a co branded card. They send you a Target Redcard you can ignore, but all it does is charge your debit card as usual. There is no credit check.

Your Amex lawsuit link is about Amex prohibiting different discounts based on payment card networks (see #4 at bottom of page 2).

Amex’s contract does not overrule the federal government’s rule that a merchant can offer a discount for debit and cash.

The Supreme Court upheld AmEx’s steering provisions in 2018.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohio_v._American_Express_Co.

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ameliaquining 6 days ago | parent [-]

Page 10: "Under Amex’s NDPs, the merchant...may not impose a 'parity surcharge' on credit card transactions, meaning a surcharge in which the merchant assesses the same surcharge amount on all credit card brands and does not surcharge debit cards at all."

	▲	lotsofpulp 6 days ago \| parent [-]
		That page is getting into the weeds, but none of that says a merchant cannot state that cash and debit cards receive an x% or $x discount. The federal regulations specifically allow discounts, and presumably some lawyers will argue that a surcharge is different from a discount. Amex is trying to do all it can, but still can’t tell a merchant they cannot advertise a discount for cash/debit.