Signboard Card-Surcharge Setup File
For clubs that add a surcharge to card payments for dances, vouchers or bottle service

Twenty-five days’ notice is not thirty.

Signboard keeps each thing a card network asks a surcharging merchant to show — the acquirer told 30 days before, signs where customers come in and where they pay, a rate within the cap, debit and prepaid cards left out, the surcharge on its own receipt line — and turns them into one printable file, every requirement ticked or not.

Open the demo See pricing

Opens in this browser with an invented club already in it. No account, no email address, nothing installed.

Signboard with its example records in itOpen the free demo →

The problem

Surcharging is allowed. Doing it wrong is not.

Visa’s own merchant page says a merchant must tell its acquirer 30 days before it begins surcharging, and links the sample signage. The rate has a cap — Visa 3% or the club’s cost of acceptance if lower, Mastercard 4% — and debit and prepaid cards are left out. When a network or acquirer asks, the club needs the file that shows it set up right.

30 days

the notice a merchant gives its acquirer before it begins surcharging.

Visa →
3%

Visa’s cap, or the club’s own cost of acceptance if that is lower; Mastercard’s is 4%.

No debit

debit and prepaid cards are left out of the surcharge.

Will not call a surcharge ready that is not.

The file says Ready only when every requirement is met: the acquirer told at least 30 days before the start date, a sign at the door and where customers pay, a rate within the cap and the cost of acceptance, debit and prepaid left out, and the surcharge on its own receipt line. Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine and Puerto Rico are flagged.

How it works

Surcharge, notices, the file

Set the surcharge

Club, state, acquirer, brands, rate, cost of acceptance from a statement, start date and what it is charged on. The cap shows as you type.

Record notices and signs

Who was told, when and how; every sign, where it went up and what it says. Signboard suggests wording with the rate filled in.

Print the file

Every requirement ticked or not, in plain words, with the records behind it.

What it will never do

It keeps the file. It charges nothing.

Signboard records how you set the surcharge up. It does not touch a card machine.

No card machine link.You set the terminal; Signboard keeps the proof.
Not fifty states.It flags the states several sources name as banning surcharges, and tells every club to check its own.
It is not a lawyer.A network inquiry goes to yours.
It never touches a payment.The licence is for software.

Pricing

Priced per club

Less than one night of surcharges.

Most clubs

One club

$49/year

One club adding a card surcharge.

  • The cap worked as you type
  • Notices and signs recorded
  • Printable network file

Group

$129/year

Up to four clubs.

  • Everything in One club
  • A file per club
  • Export for your acquirer

Yearly licence. Your bank statement says Signboard Software. Refunded in full on request within 30 days. Your licence key is emailed to you within two working days of payment.

Checkout is our own bitcoin server, not a card processor — nobody we had to apply to and nobody who can close the account. The button takes you straight to it. Give your email address there — that is where your key is sent.

Questions

The ones we actually get asked

What is the cost of acceptance?

Your card fees divided by your card sales, from a statement. Visa’s cap is 3% or this figure, whichever is lower.

Can we surcharge debit cards?

No. Debit and prepaid cards are left out. Signboard’s calculator shows a customer what each card pays.

Where do signs go?

Where customers come in and where they pay. Signboard records each one and suggests the wording.

Is this legal advice?

No. It is the file a network asks for.

What do I actually get when I pay?

The demo on this page is the whole program, running on invented records. Paying gets you a licence key — one line of text, emailed to the address you give at checkout within two working days. Paste it into the program and from then on it keeps your own records. Until then, nothing you type into it is kept.

The key is checked inside the page, on your own machine. It never calls us, so there is still no account and nothing about your business goes anywhere. If you ever stop paying, your records stay exactly where they are, read-only, and Export still hands you every one of them.

Open the demo before you start surcharging

The invented Texas club starts in five days with the acquirer told twenty days ago, at 3.5% — over Visa’s cap and its own 2.9% cost — with a sign at the door and none where customers pay. Signboard will not call it ready.

Open the demo See pricing