Collecting trade payments on credit cards, especially from slow-pay or potentially no-pay customers, has obvious advantages. The obvious disadvantage, particularly for low-margin business to the 2.5 to 3 percent merchant account fee.

So, we hear the question all the time from credit execs: "Can we charge them extra when they pay by credit card?" Except in certain instances, the answer is no, since merchant agreements, as established by MasterCard, Visa, and American Express, prohibit passing on the cost in the form of a surcharge.

Despite that, we hear reports of companies passing on the costs of credit card use by varying methods, often using terms other than "surcharge" (such as "convenience charge").

A prominent creditor's attorney recently advised us that, while it may be prohibited, he's never seen any evidence of the credit card companies enforcing the provision. He's sampled a number of credit managers over the years who say they pass on the costs credit card use in some fashion.

He also advised that he has sampled some card industry executives who advised non-enforcement in this area. This makes sense given what we see at some credit conferences. Most credit conferences solicit vendors to be "sponsors" at their conferences, and the highest paying sponsors we've seen are the credit card companies. If they get a business (large or small) to use their merchant account, it can be a very lucrative contract. In fact, we've seen banks routinely pay $25,000 to have access to credit managers of large companies at credit conferences in order to solicit their merchant account business.

So based purely on the economics of these contracts, we suspect that they may be very reluctant to cut off one of those customers for trying to recoup some of the costs of offering credit cards to their customers.

Are we recommending that you start passing on this cost?  No. We're just passing on our observations and intelligence in this area. It's a trend that we'll continue to follow. In the mean time, there are many resources and articles on the acceptance of credit cards in our new "Credit Card" department on our website - http://www.credittoday.net/public/department91.cfm.