Is it legal for a restaurant to charge a 50 cent surcharge for using a credit card?

Answer 1

Quite a few restaurants charge a minimal fee for CC use. It isn't a matter of "legality". Just the way a place chooses to offset the accounting expenses. No it is not legal to surcharge 50 cents or any amount on a credit card, but yes it is legal to surcharge on a debit/check/atm card any amount. A situation has been going on where people are complaining about being surcharged on there debit cards. First of all some of these people are ignorant because they do not understand the difference between a credit card and a debit card and when there card is processed as debit they get upset arguing to run there debit card as credit. There debit card will never be a credit card, the money that gets authorized for a transaction on there card is debited out of there checking or savings account. Credit obviously is the money that a financial institution is authorizing you to borrow and if you do not return that money before the billing cycle you have to pay interest. Also, there are people that ignore the rates that a restaurant pay on each credit or debit transaction and sometimes the restaurants or mom and pop stores lose when someone buys a chocolate bar or a soda using there credit or debit card. The surcharge or convenience fee that the drive throughs charge helps maintain the low prices of the food due to what the mrchant pays for credit or debit card processing. Some of these places pay up to $1,500.00 a month on credit card processing. Bottom line, yes it is legal to surcharge $.50 or more on debit/check/atm card transactions. I have paid $.99 at a taco bell and $.75 at McDonalds. $.50 is quite decent.