@anotherusername said:
In addition to setting a minimum charge, merchants may also charge a surcharge to accept credit cards. Charging customers extra for credit card transactions became legal in January 2013 as a result of a federal court case that challenged Visa and MasterCard's right to forbid such surcharges.
However, as of 04-2015 in the EU it is illegal for payment service providers to charge payees with transaction fees that exceed 0.3% of the transaction sum for credit cards and 0.2% for debit cards, first codified in Regulation 2013/0265 (COD).
The Directive 2011/83/EU and the Directive (EU) 2015/2366 make it illegal for a payee to surcharge a paying customer for more transaction fees than the payee itself had to pay to the payment service provider.
In effect, that means the 0.2% and 0.3% caps apply to consumers as well.
Moreover, Regulation (EU) No 260/2012 as referered to in 2015/2366 tightens the bolts further. It states that for direct debit transactions that remain within the union, the payee may never incur more fees than the cheapest representative payment service provider would levee on them.
The Directive (EU) 2015/2366 also needs the payee to communicate any possible surcharges to the customer up front before entering the payment transaction. Any surcharges after the fact, when already in the payment flow, are under no obligation to be paid, period.