Question

When users make credit card transactions on my web app, I’d like to include the transaction fee on the confirmation page before the user makes the order. The thing is, there are different transaction fees for different cards. Is there a way to determine a transaction fee from the card number?

I’m using Rails and ActiveMerchant, but I figure this question was applicable to other languages as well.

Answer 1

Note that the transaction fee that your merchant account provider charges you is almost never a single amount per card type (Visa / MC / Amex). Rather, the amount varies depending on the style of card (Visa regular card vs Visa Corporate cards, vs Visa Signature Reward cards vs International Visa card, etc).

The different rates depend on how highly “qualified” the card is.

And there is no way to tell what kind of card / transaction fee you’ll be charged for the card ahead of time. — The banks don’t want you to know the fee ahead of time since that would give merchants a financial incentive to refuse the more expensive types of cards.

I recommend: check your merchant account bank statement. Figure out the average transaction fee that your bank is charging you, then charge that to your customers. It’s almost always a combination of a rate and a per transaction amount. Eg 2.2% / $.10

And remember that to get the best qualification, always send the bank the customer’s street address and zip, and put values in the order number, description and po fields. If you don’t have a po from the customer, make one up from the customer’s name and telephone.

I’ve also heard of some merchants putting a fixed value in the tax field, apparently there are corp cards where you’ll get a better qualification if the tax field has a value.