Small business owners in retail, restaurants, and services are adding a credit card surcharge line item to recover 2–3% interchange fees eating into their net margin. The pain is the fee itself and the compliance minefield around doing it legally — wrong signage or a surcharged debit card can cost $25,000 per violation.
35% of US small businesses now surcharge, according to the J.D. Power 2026 Merchant Services Satisfaction Survey of 3,841 businesses, and the share keeps climbing as fees rise — giving ISOs and compliance software a clear addressable base to sell into.
On January 24, 2026, Visa raised Level 2 interchange rates for small business credit cards by 75 basis points, directly increasing monthly processing bills for any merchant on interchange-plus pricing and pushing fence-sitters toward surcharging to recover the difference.
In June 2026, a federal judge granted preliminary approval to a $38 billion Visa–Mastercard swipe-fee settlement covering 12 million US merchants — the settlement gives merchants explicit new rights to decline high-cost premium rewards cards, fueling a new wave of surcharge and dual-pricing program sign-ups.
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