Georgia Credit Card Surcharge Law
Georgia credit card surcharge law allows surcharging, but the state holds you to your actual cost of card acceptance, with no profit built in. The rule comes from the attorney general's office, not a codified statute written for general retailers, and it stacks on top of whatever Visa or Mastercard already caps you at. Clear notice at the door and an exact-amount line on the receipt keep you inside it.
Georgia Allows Credit Card Surcharging
No flat ban, no percentage cap written into general retail law. The ceiling is your own cost.
Georgia does not ban credit card surcharges and does not set a flat percentage cap the way a handful of other states do. Instead, the Georgia Attorney General's Consumer Protection Division holds merchants to a plainer standard: you can pass along your cost of accepting the card, but you cannot turn the surcharge into a profit center. Charge more than that and the state can pursue it as an unfair or deceptive practice.
That actual-cost standard runs alongside whatever Visa or Mastercard already caps you at, not instead of it, and both apply at once. There is no flat percentage in Georgia's rule. The ceiling is what card acceptance actually costs your dealership.
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Status | Allowed with limits |
| Cap | Your actual processing cost |
| Where the rule lives | AG guidance under the Fair Business Practices Act, not a general retail statute |
| Disclosure | Notice at entry, exact amount on the receipt |
Georgia is one of 47 states where surcharging is legal. See the full table at credit card surcharge laws by state.
Actual Cost, Not a Flat Percentage
Georgia's rule and the card networks' rules both point at the same ceiling: what the card actually costs you.
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Visa: 3% Cap
Or your actual cost of acceptance, whichever is lower.
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Mastercard: 4% Cap
Same actual cost logic as Visa, just a higher ceiling.
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Debit Never Surcharges
Debit, prepaid, and gift cards can never carry a surcharge, in Georgia or anywhere else.
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Disclosure Is Mandatory
Post notice at the door, and show the exact surcharge amount as its own line on the receipt.
Measured Against Your Real Cost
Georgia's rule does not set a number. The limit is what the card actually costs you to accept, and a rate that clears the Visa or Mastercard ceiling does not automatically clear Georgia's standard, because the state measures against your actual cost, not a network percentage. Your merchant statement, not a flat rate, is what the cap points to.
Guidance, Not a General Statute
This is worth understanding before a Google search sends you to the wrong code section.
Search for Georgia's surcharge law and the results point you to O.C.G.A. 10-1-393.3. That statute is real, but it does not do what secondary sources often claim: today it restricts what a merchant can require from a cardholder, like demanding a phone number or ID or recording the card number, and it says nothing about surcharge caps or disclosure. The actual-cost standard that governs surcharging does not come from a general retail statute at all. It comes from the Georgia Attorney General's Consumer Protection Division, which takes the position that surcharging above your real cost of acceptance is an unfair or deceptive act under the state's Fair Business Practices Act.
Two bills tried to close that gap and write the actual-cost cap directly into O.C.G.A. 10-1-393.3: HB 700 and HB 726. Neither passed. HB 726 made it furthest: tabled in the Senate, sent back to committee in January 2026, and dead when the session adjourned that April. So as of July 2026 the actual-cost standard rests on AG guidance and Fair Business Practices Act enforcement, not a purpose-built surcharge statute. That is an open legislative gap, not a settled one, and it is worth revisiting if a future session tries again.
A Separate Statute, Not Surcharge Authority
O.C.G.A. 13-1-15 does define an actual-cost standard and disclosure language that reads a lot like the AG's surcharge guidance. But its scope is narrow: it governs convenience fees on specific financing contracts, think retail installment and motor vehicle financing agreements, Title 7 lending, and insurance premium finance agreements, not general retail credit card surcharges at the sales counter. It is useful background on how Georgia defines "actual cost" in a related context, but it is not the statute that authorizes surcharging a repair order or a vehicle sale.
What This Means at the Counter
The counter needs three things right, and none of them require a lawyer on standby.
Georgia's ceiling is measured against what card acceptance actually costs your store, and your merchant statement is where that number lives. Debit never carries a surcharge, in Georgia or anywhere else, no exceptions and no workarounds. Post notice at the point of entry, and put the exact surcharge amount on its own line on the receipt. Skip the vague disclosures and put a real number in front of the customer. We track the state, not your front desk.
Payments post straight to the repair order in CDK Drive, so the surcharge line shows up where your advisors already work. See the full mechanics on the surcharge program page, or walk through exactly what happens at the terminal on the how it works page.
Straight Answers on Georgia Rules
Yes. Georgia has no statute banning surcharges or setting a flat percentage cap for general retail merchants. The Georgia Attorney General's office holds merchants to their actual cost of card acceptance, enforceable under the Fair Business Practices Act, with advance notice and receipt disclosure.
There is no fixed percentage in Georgia's rule. The cap is your actual cost of accepting the card, per the attorney general's guidance. Visa's 3 percent ceiling and Mastercard's 4 percent ceiling still apply on top of that, both under the same lesser-of-actual-cost logic.
Not a general-purpose one. The actual-cost standard comes from the attorney general's guidance and Fair Business Practices Act enforcement, not a statute written to cap retail surcharges. A bill that would have written the cap directly into law, HB 726, died in committee when the session adjourned in April 2026.
No. Debit, prepaid, and gift cards can never carry a surcharge, in Georgia or any other state. That is a card network rule, not a state one, and it follows the card itself regardless of how it runs at the terminal.
Post notice at the point of entry, or on the first page where card information is entered for an online sale, and disclose the exact surcharge amount as its own line on the receipt. For pricing and program questions beyond state law, see the FAQ page.
Straight Answers on Georgia
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