Surcharging With InterPayments and Chargent

The company needed to recover card costs without disrupting its order, fulfillment, and accounting processes. Its sales and customer service teams work in Salesforce, while fulfillment and accounting run in its ERP.

Its payment mix made that harder. Many of its customers are school districts and other public entities that pay with single-use account (SUA) cards, the one-time virtual cards that public-sector accounts payable teams often use. Surcharge rules for those cards are more complex, and with public-sector customers, a mistake could damage the relationship.

Customer service takes card payments for phone orders directly in Salesforce. Chargent pre-authorizes the card on CyberSource, and the order and payment token pass to the ERP, which charges the card when the order ships. Card numbers no longer get written down and walked to accounting.

Chargent’s integration with InterPayments added surcharging to that workflow, with no new gateway. Surcharge amounts are recorded on each Chargent transaction record.

InterPayments designed the surcharge program and handles compliance:

• Credit and SUA Cards: a pre-notification approach that applies surcharges to both credit and SUA card payments and shows the full amount up front.
• Card Eligibility: a multi-source BIN (card identification) database determines card type and surcharge eligibility for each transaction.
• Compliance: coverage for state, provincial, federal and card-brand rules, with contractual indemnification and annual compliance certifications. Lower-cost payment options stay available, so customers keep their choice.
• Reporting: real-time transaction logs with surcharge and eligibility details, and tracking of fee savings over time.

• $57,958 in card fees before surcharging
• 60% of credit card volume surcharged
• $36,702 in estimated total savings
• An estimated 63% reduction in card fees

Customer service takes the payment while the customer is on the phone, and the surcharge is recorded in Salesforce with the rest of the order. Fulfillment and accounting keep working the way they already did.

Surcharging on SUA cards can be hard to get right, but this company didn’t have to rebuild anything to do it. Chargent brought payments into the Salesforce workflow its team already used, and InterPayments handled the eligibility and compliance rules. That’s what made it workable for a business whose customers include school districts.

See how card surcharging with Chargent and InterPayments works:
Recapture Revenue With Surcharging