Supreme Court orders closer look at credit card surcharge laws

The Supreme Court on Wednesday unanimously ordered a lower court to take another look at laws that ban merchants from describing the higher price they charge when customers pay with a credit card instead of cash as a “credit card surcharge.”

Under the law in New York and other states, merchants must describe the difference as a “cash discount.”

In delivering the opinion of the court, Chief Justice John Roberts said the the law regulates speech, as the merchants argued it did, but sent the case back to the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals to decide whether it is unconstitutional. 

{mosads}“Each time one of their customers pays with a credit card, these merchants must pay some transaction fee to the company that issued the credit card. The fee is generally two to three percent of the purchase price,” Roberts explained in his opinion.

“Those fees add up, and the merchants allege that they pay tens of thousands of dollars every year to credit card companies. Rather than increase prices across the board to absorb those costs, the merchants want to pass the fees along only to their customers who choose to use credit cards. They also want to make clear that they are not the bad guys — that the credit card companies, not the merchants, are responsible for the higher prices.”