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PermittedLast verified: 2026-08-25

Is credit card surcharging legal in Florida?

Yes. Merchants may add a credit card surcharge in Florida. Florida still prints a surcharge ban at Fla. Stat. § 501.0117, but the Eleventh Circuit struck it down as an unconstitutional restriction on speech in Dana's Railroad Supply v. Attorney General, 807 F.3d 1235 (2015). The practical effect is that Florida merchants may surcharge. Because the statute remains in the code and the ruling rested on the First Amendment rather than a repeal, disclose the surcharge clearly before the customer pays.

The statute

Citation: Fla. Stat. § 501.0117 (held unconstitutional, 11th Cir. 2015)

We have not reproduced operative text here because we could not confirm a clean verbatim quote against the official source. Follow the citation and the source links below.

How much you can charge

No state cap. The binding limits are the card networks: Visa caps a credit card surcharge at the lower of your merchant discount rate or 3% (reduced from 4% effective 15 April 2023) and Mastercard caps it at 4%. Surcharging debit cards is prohibited nationwide.

Disclosure requirements

The Eleventh Circuit's reasoning turned on how the price difference is described to customers. Show the surcharge as its own itemised line before checkout completes, and keep cash- and card-price displays consistent.

Not legal advice

This page is a research summary for merchants, not legal advice, and no attorney-client relationship is created by reading it. Surcharge rules change, they interact with card-network rules and federal law, and they can turn on facts specific to your business. Consult licensed counsel in Florida before you implement or change a surcharge.

Putting this into practice on Shopify

Rules like these only help if your checkout can actually enforce them, including on Shop Pay, Apple Pay and Google Pay.

Shopify surcharge guideSee FeeLayer