Passing on the fee

Fees for card payments issued to an individual by a bank based in the EU are regulated. The European Union has set caps on interchange fees for so-called regulated cards, i.e. cards issued to individuals. Fees for payments issued to legal entities, i.e. companies or entrepreneurs, are not regulated. Fees for payments made with cards issued outside the EU are also unregulated. This explains the multiplicative difference between the cost of payments with regulated cards and those not subject to EU regulation.

For regulated cards, surcharging is expressly prohibited by the Payment Act. For non-regulated cards, the merchant may charge a surcharge up to the direct cost of the payment.

During payment card data entry, the payment gateway identifies the non-regulated payment card type. The payment gateway displays information about the surcharge to the buyer and the payment amount is increased by the surcharge. In this case, the shopper has the option to pay with the surcharge or select another payment method, such as QR payment or a consumer payment card issued in the EU, which are free of surcharges.

In all cases, the merchant will receive the requested payment amount less a fee at the rate set for regulated payment cards. In the case of the Profi tariff, this is 0.62% + 0.7 CZK. Regardless of the type of card used by the customer, the merchant will always receive CZK 993.1 for a payment of 1,000 CZK. This provides a predictable return for the merchant. The remainder of the cost is borne by the payer in the form of a surcharge.

When paying with Apple Pay or Google Pay, the payment gateway does not receive real-time information about the type of payment card. The merchant has two options: 1) disallow Apple Pay and Google Pay on the payment gateway (however, the browser's ability to fill in payment card information will still work), 2) allow Apple Pay and Google Pay payments and count on the surcharge feature not being enabled for these payments and the merchant paying the full cost of the payment.