You're paying for your customers' credit card points. A surcharge changes that.
Every credit card payment costs your dealership a processing fee. That fee is what funds the rewards on the customer's card.
With a surcharge on credit card payments, the customer who chooses to pay by credit covers that fee instead, within legal caps. Debit is never surcharged.
This is how the money moves on a $1,000 repair order.
You pay the card fee. All of it.
The customer pays $1,000. About $20 goes to the customer's bank, the card network, and processor. It comes out of your side of the transaction.
The customer covers half.
A 1% surcharge is added automatically at the terminal for customers paying by credit, disclosed before they tap. It covers half your processing fee. Debit customers pay $1,000, nothing is added.
Your net cost on credit is zero.
The surcharge matches your processing rate, up to the legal cap. The customer who chooses credit funds the whole cost of that choice. Nothing goes to you beyond the repair.
Try it with your numbers.
Set your processing rate and drag the surcharge rate.
What the rules say.
Surcharging is regulated by the card networks and by law. The caps are what keep it fair.
Or your actual processing rate if lower. Credit only. Not permitted in Quebec.
Or your actual processing rate if lower. Some states restrict or prohibit surcharging. Confirm the rules where your dealership operates.
Kimoby Pay detects the payment method. Debit is never surcharged, in Canada or the US. Every customer keeps a zero-fee way to pay.
Shown before the customer pays, on signage and on the terminal. Set per dealership.
Surcharge is credit-card only and varies by jurisdiction: up to 3% in the US, up to 2.4% in Canada, and not permitted in Quebec. Set per dealership. Figures on this page are illustrative and depend on your card mix. A surcharge may never exceed your cost of acceptance, meaning the total processing fees you pay to accept the card. Each dealership is responsible for confirming that surcharging complies with the laws and card-network rules where it operates. Kimoby provides the tooling and is not responsible for how it is used.
Questions dealers ask.
These come up in almost every conversation about surcharging.
The dealership profits off the surcharge.
Impossible by rule. The surcharge is legally capped at what you actually pay in processing fees. It can cover that cost. It can never exceed it.
The dealership stops paying fees.
No. You still pay the full processing fee on every credit transaction. The customer who chooses credit covers it instead. Full recovery means they cover ~100%. A 1% surcharge means they cover about half.
Customers are trapped.
Debit is never surcharged, by network rule. Every customer has a zero-fee way to pay, every time.
It only helps on big tickets.
It scales with volume, not ticket size. The math is the same on a $200 oil change and a $4,000 repair.
See it on a Kimoby Pay terminal.
You set the surcharge. The terminal enforces the caps and shows the disclosure before the customer pays.
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