You can't charge your customer a fee for paying by a consumer debit or credit card. You can charge one for a commercial or corporate card, capped at what that particular payment actually costs you. Where neither rule bites, no statutory cap applies. The ban lives in regulation 6A of the Consumer Rights (Payment Surcharges) Regulations 2012.
In this article
The short version
- Regulation 6A(1) of the Consumer Rights (Payment Surcharges) Regulations 2012 bans any fee for payment by a card-based instrument that isn't a commercial card.
- Regulation 6A was inserted by the Payment Services Regulations 2017 and took effect on 13 January 2018, so it belongs to the 2012 Regulations and not to the 2017 ones.
- Commercial and corporate cards can be surcharged, but the fee must not exceed the costs you bear for that specific instrument (6A(2)).
- Your surcharge may recover the merchant service charge and transaction fees paid to intermediaries, and not your general overheads.
- Costs can be averaged within one payment method and never across two or more, so a single flat "card fee" covering consumer and commercial cards is the trap.
- Enforcement runs through Trading Standards and the CMA, and an unlawful fee is unenforceable and refundable.
The three tiers in one place
Most pages on this subject give you one rule, usually "surcharging is banned", and leave you unable to explain why your accountant's invoice carries a card fee. There are three positions, and the instrument your customer paid with decides which one you're in.
| Payment instrument | What you may charge |
|---|---|
| Consumer debit, credit and prepaid cards | Nothing. A fee is banned outright by regulation 6A(1) |
| Commercial and corporate cards | A fee capped at the costs you bear for that specific instrument, under regulation 6A(2) |
| Anything outside both rules | No statutory limit on the level of the surcharge |
That third row surprises people, and it comes straight from the government's own guidance: where none of the regulations apply, "there is no limit on the level at which a surcharge can be set". Commercial common sense still applies, and so do your contract terms, but the cap doesn't.
The ban on consumer card surcharges
The operative wording is short. A payee "must not charge a payer any fee" in respect of payment by a card-based payment instrument as defined in Article 2(20) of the Interchange Fee Regulation which "is not a commercial card" as defined in Article 2(6) of the same regulation.
Two details matter to you. The ban applies to the payee, so it catches you as the business taking the money whoever your customer is. And it's drawn by reference to the card and not to the customer, so a sole trader paying your invoice on a personal debit card is covered even though the purchase is entirely for their business.
Government guidance describes the reach in ordinary language: the ban "applies to most retail payment instruments", and these "include the vast majority of cards, including Visa and MasterCard; however, they do not include corporate cards issued to employees for business expenditures".
Plenty of published summaries attribute the ban to the Payment Services Regulations 2017. That's understandable, since the 2017 Regulations put it there, by paragraph 12 of Schedule 8, with effect from 13 January 2018. But the rule you're complying with is regulation 6A of the 2012 Regulations as inserted, and quoting the right instrument in your terms or in a dispute saves an argument.
Commercial and corporate cards
Commercial cards fall outside the interchange fee caps, so they cost you more to accept than a consumer card does. The law responds by leaving them surchargeable, and that's why the practice is so common in professional services where clients pay on a company card.
The permission comes with its own ceiling, in regulation 6A(2): a payee "must not charge the payer, in respect of such payment, a fee which exceeds the costs borne by the payee for the use of that specific payment instrument". Regulation 4 of the same instrument carries the parallel consumer-facing rule, that a trader must not charge fees "that exceed the cost borne by the trader for the use of that means" of payment. The guidance summarises both together: surcharges "are permitted, but must not exceed the costs incurred by the merchant / trader in processing the relevant means of payment".
So a business card surcharge is a cost recovery, and your number has to be defensible against what you actually pay. If your acquirer charges you 2.1% on commercial cards, a 3% surcharge is unlawful, and your customer can decline the excess.
What a lawful surcharge may include
The guidance is specific about the ingredients. For card payments, legitimate surcharges "could include fees directly charged to the payee such as: The Merchant Service Charge... or The transaction/overhead fees paid by the company to intermediaries".
It's equally specific about the exclusion: "the general costs of running a business not directly incurred in consequence of use of the payment method in question cannot be included in a surcharge". Your finance software subscription, your credit controller's time and your bank charges aren't caused by the customer choosing a corporate card, so they stay out of the calculation.
That leaves you with the merchant service charge on the transaction, plus anything an intermediary bills you for processing that same payment. Keep the workings somewhere you could produce them, because the burden of showing the fee is cost-based falls on you, not on the customer challenging it.
Averaging within a method, never across methods
A compliant intention turns into an unlawful fee here. The guidance permits averaging, but only inside a single method: costs "must not be calculated on an average basis across two or more individual methods of payment... and applied as a flat fee across those means of payment", while "within a single method of payment" it is reasonable "for the payee/trader to impose its charge on an averaged basis".
So you can take your commercial card costs across a year, average them, and apply one percentage to every commercial card payment. What you can't do is take the cost of accepting cards generally, average that, and apply it as a flat card fee.
A single "card fee" that lands on consumer and commercial cards alike fails twice over. It charges a fee on consumer cards in breach of regulation 6A(1), and it recovers an averaged cost across two instruments with different economics in breach of the averaging rule. The fix is mechanical: your checkout has to know the card type before it prices the fee, and charge nothing where the card is a consumer one.
Payment methods other than cards
Regulation 4 isn't limited to plastic. It "applies to any means of payment that a trader decides to accept", and the guidance lists cash, cheques, credit and debit cards, prepaid and charge cards, mobile payments, credit transfers and direct debits. Where a consumer contract is in scope, the cost-based cap follows the payment method whatever it is.
Euro credit transfers and euro direct debits under the SEPA schemes are caught by the outright ban in regulation 6A(1)(c) as well.
Open banking is the gap. Nothing in the legislation or in the government guidance addresses pay by bank as a named category, so this article takes no position on whether an open banking surcharge is lawful and at what level. Anyone telling you confidently either way is reasoning by analogy, as we would be. If a fee on open banking payments matters to your pricing, take advice on your specific structure.
How the rules are enforced
Two routes exist, and you're far more likely to meet the second of them first.
Trading Standards and the Competition and Markets Authority can enforce under Part 8 of the Enterprise Act 2002, and the remedy there is an injunction to stop the practice. No statutory penalty figure appears in the guidance, so the regulator's tool is a court order and not a fine.
Your customer doesn't have to wait for a regulator. Where a fee breaches the rules, the fee or the excess over cost "is unenforceable and therefore the customer is not under any obligation to pay it", and where they've already paid it, the amount "is refundable". So a customer who reads the rule can decline the line on your invoice and be right, and if you've been applying a flat card fee for two years, the exposure covers every consumer card payment inside that period.
Setting up business card surcharging in practice
Most of the compliance work here is configuration and not drafting. Four things carry the weight:
- Identify the card type at the point of payment, so the fee only ever applies to commercial and corporate cards. A checkout that can't distinguish them can't surcharge safely.
- Set the rate from your own acquirer pricing for that instrument, and write down the arithmetic that got you there.
- Show the fee before your customer commits, as a separate line with the amount stated, so nobody meets it for the first time on a receipt.
- Review the rate when your acquiring costs change, because a surcharge that was cost-based in 2024 can drift above cost without anyone touching it.
Adfin applies a surcharge to business card payments only and leaves the consumer card path clean, matching the split the regulations require. Whoever you collect with, ask your provider how their checkout tells a commercial card from a consumer one, because everything else here depends on that answer.
Common questions
Can I charge a card fee to my customers in the UK? Only for commercial and corporate cards, and only up to what that payment costs you. Regulation 6A(1) of the Consumer Rights (Payment Surcharges) Regulations 2012 bans any fee on a card-based instrument that isn't a commercial card, so consumer debit and credit cards carry no fee at all.
Is the surcharge ban part of the Payment Services Regulations 2017? Not quite. The 2017 Regulations inserted it, by paragraph 12 of Schedule 8, with effect from 13 January 2018, but the provision itself is regulation 6A of the Consumer Rights (Payment Surcharges) Regulations 2012. Cite it that way.
How much can I charge on a commercial card? No more than the costs you bear for that specific payment instrument. Government guidance points to the merchant service charge and transaction fees paid to intermediaries, and excludes the general costs of running your business.
Can I apply one flat card fee to every card payment? That's the arrangement most likely to be unlawful. It charges a banned fee on consumer cards, and it averages costs across two instruments in a way the guidance excludes. Averaging is allowed inside a single payment method only.
What happens if I charge a surcharge I shouldn't have? The fee, or the part of it above your cost, is unenforceable, so your customer doesn't have to pay it, and anything already paid is refundable. Trading Standards and the CMA can also seek an injunction under Part 8 of the Enterprise Act 2002.
Can I surcharge an open banking or pay by bank payment? Nothing in the legislation or the government guidance we could find names open banking as a category, so we don't state a position on it. If it affects your pricing, take advice on your specific setup.
Sources
- Legislation.gov.uk — Consumer Rights (Payment Surcharges) Regulations 2012, regulation 6A (accurate as of August 2026)
- Department for Business and Trade — payment surcharges guidance, 2018 (accurate as of August 2026)
This article explains the UK rules on payment surcharges and is not legal advice. The regulations and the guidance change, so check the current position before you set a fee. Last updated August 2026.
