Credit card processing and merchant services in Richmond, BC

Richmond counted 209,937 residents at the 2021 Census, up 5.9% from 2016, a little slower than B.C.'s 7.6% over the same period, and Statistics Canada ranked it fourth in the province by population. If you run a shop there and you're weighing a credit card surcharge, think about returns before you think about signs.

Visa's surcharging rules say that when you refund a purchase, the surcharge has to be credited back to the cardholder as well. Say a customer pays for a $300 jacket with a 2% surcharge of $6.00 and returns it a week later: the $6.00 goes back along with the price of the jacket. If your POS refunds only the item, each return breaks Visa's rule. Run a test refund before your first surcharged sale.

The other choices come before launch. Visa lets you surcharge at the brand level or at the product level, but not both. Both networks cap a surcharge at 2.4% or your cost of acceptance, whichever is lower, and neither allows one on its debit or prepaid cards. You'll also need 30 days' notice (to your acquirer for Visa, to Mastercard and your acquirer for Mastercard), signs at the entrance and the point of sale, and the amount on every receipt. Visa adds that convenience fees aren't permitted in Canada.

Bags add one more line to Richmond receipts. B.C. requires at least 25 cents for a new paper shopping bag and $2 for a new reusable one, so set them up as POS items. And if you also run a trade or a home-visit health service across city lines, Richmond is one of six cities in the Metro West Inter-Municipal Business Licence.

Before you print a surcharge sign, find out what you pay. A free statement review shows your cost of acceptance, and interchange-plus pricing may bring it down far enough that you skip the surcharge. If you go ahead, our surcharging program covers setup and disclosure. Our retail page and the British Columbia page have more.