Feature request: Native credit card surcharge option
Add a toggle in Settings > Payments to automatically pass credit card processing fees to customers when they select a card payment method. Should apply across online checkout, Shopify POS, and draft orders. Similar to how Melio handles this with a simple on/off setting.
This is one of those ideas that sounds straightforward but gets complicated fast.
Legally, credit card surcharging is restricted or outright banned in a bunch of states and countries. In the EU, surcharges on consumer card payments have been illegal since 2018. Several US states (like Massachusetts, Connecticut) also prohibit it. So a native toggle would need geo-based logic to stay compliant, which is probably why Shopify hasn’t built it.
From a conversion standpoint, it’s also risky. Customers see a fee added at checkout and it feels like a penalty for using their preferred payment method. That kind of friction at the last step is where a lot of abandoned carts come from.
What I’ve seen work better is baking the processing cost into your prices and then offering a cash/ACH discount instead. Psychologically, a discount feels like a reward rather than a surcharge feeling like a punishment. Same math, very different customer reaction.
Are you seeing the processing fees eat into margins on specific products, or is it more of a general concern?
Totally agree with this — a native credit card surcharge option would be super useful.
Right now, a lot of merchants are stuck either absorbing processing fees or trying to build awkward workarounds that don’t apply consistently across online checkout, POS, and draft orders. Having a simple on/off toggle in Settings > Payments would make this way easier to manage.
A good setup would be something like:
Enable/disable surcharge with one click
Apply it automatically only when credit card is selected
Work across:
Online checkout
Shopify POS
Draft orders / invoices
Show the fee clearly as a separate line item at checkout and on receipts
Allow merchants to set:
Flat fee
Percentage fee
Or match actual processing cost
Optional setting by country/market, since surcharge rules vary by location
That would make it much more transparent for customers and save merchants from relying on third-party apps or manual edits.
One important thing though: Shopify would also need to support this in a compliance-safe way, since card surcharge laws depend on the country/state. So ideally, it should only be available where legally allowed and include proper receipt/display handling.
This would honestly be a really solid feature if done natively.
Lots of businesses and platforms do this. For instance, Melio, it’s a simple toggle to turn on allowing customers to absorb the processing fee. It’s much easier than us absorbing $35K every year, that’s insane. we are looking at other options since Shopify won’t add this much needed feature. And could easily not apply to states where it’s not legal.
How can Melio do it no problem?
Business impact: We process high order volume and are absorbing up to ~$600/day in unrecoverable processing fees. This is a critical need for small and mid-size merchants and would meaningfully reduce the cost of doing business on Shopify. Paying with card I expect to pay a processing fee.
A few years ago most stores probably just absorbed these costs without thinking too much about it.
But between rising ad costs, returns, shipping, apps, and payment fees, margins feel a lot tighter now than they used to.
I still think visible checkout fees can hurt conversion, but I understand why more merchants are starting to ask for this kind of flexibility.
Yeah this is a real annoying gap, especially at $35K/year in absorbed fees. The Melio comparison breaks down once you look at what each platform actually handles.
Melio is B2B accounts payable, ACH transfers and card-funded payments to vendors where the receiver is a business. Surcharge rules for B2B and ACH are looser in most US states than rules for consumer card payments at retail or online checkout, which is what Shopify’s standard checkout handles. Different regulatory bucket.
The closer analog on the Shopify side is Stripe’s Surcharge API, enabled in surcharge-allowed US states for compliant merchants. Shopify Payments uses Stripe under the hood but hasn’t exposed surcharging as a merchant-facing setting yet. The legal complexity isn’t really the blocker so much as the operational complexity of geofencing per state plus advance disclosure language that varies state to state.
If you can’t wait, two pragmatic angles to test:
Discount-for-cash framing online instead of a fee on card. Offer a 2-3% discount for ACH or store credit at checkout. Same economics, different framing, and discount-for-cash is legal in nearly every jurisdiction where surcharging is restricted.
POS convenience fee with Chargly that sasquatchstudio mentioned upthread, which handles the in-person side cleanly. Smaller addressable percentage but legal almost everywhere.
What’s your payment mix, mostly online card or split with POS?