North Carolina has no state law of its own that regulates credit card surcharges. But unlike Pennsylvania or Ohio, that isn’t the end of the story here: North Carolina House Bill 13 would cap merchant surcharges at 2% of the transaction, and as of its most recent action on September 23, 2025, it’s still alive in committee, not dead and not enacted. Until it moves one way or the other, what actually governs a surcharge on a North Carolina receipt is the same private network rulebook that applies almost everywhere surcharging is legal.

Why Merchants Surcharge At All

Every time a customer pays by credit card, the merchant pays an interchange fee to the card network, typically 1.5% to 3.5% of the transaction depending on the card and the merchant’s processing agreement. A surcharge is the merchant passing that cost back to the customer paying by card, rather than building it into the shelf price for everyone. Both major networks cap the surcharge at the merchant’s actual cost of acceptance, which is what keeps a surcharge a cost pass-through instead of a hidden profit center.

What Actually Applies Right Now

North Carolina’s General Statutes Chapter 75, the state’s Monopolies, Trusts and Consumer Protection chapter, covers unfair trade practices, debt collection, identity theft protection, price gouging during declared emergencies, automatic-renewal contracts and ticket-pricing transparency. Reading the chapter in full turns up nothing that addresses credit card surcharges, checkout fees, or payment-method fees of any kind. Like Pennsylvania’s UTPCPL, it wasn’t written with this problem in mind, and it doesn’t reach it by implication either.

In the absence of a state-specific rule, the rules that actually constrain a North Carolina merchant come from the card networks:

• Visa caps surcharges at 3% of the transaction.
• Mastercard caps surcharges at 4%.
• Either cap is a ceiling, not a target: the surcharge can never exceed the merchant’s actual cost of accepting the card, so the real limit is whichever number is lower.
• Signage disclosing the surcharge is required at the store entrance and again at the point of sale, or before checkout completes online.
• The surcharge has to appear as its own line item on the receipt, not folded silently into the listed price.
• The merchant has to notify its acquiring bank before it starts surcharging at all.

None of this is North Carolina-specific. It’s the identical rulebook that governs surcharging in most states that allow it at all, and right now North Carolina hasn’t layered anything of its own on top.

The Bill That Could Change This

House Bill 13, “Charges for Credit & Charge Cards,” was filed January 29, 2025 by Reps. Warren, Ross and Tyson. It would cap merchant credit and charge card surcharges at 2% of the transaction, a full percentage point tighter than Visa’s own 3% ceiling. That’s the detail that makes this a genuinely different story from Pennsylvania or Ohio: this isn’t a proposal to create disclosure rules layered on top of the network caps, it’s a proposal to undercut those caps directly with a lower state-mandated number.

The bill has been substantively reworked three separate times since filing, each producing a new committee substitute, and its most recent action was a re-referral to the Committee on Rules, Calendar, and Operations of the House on September 23, 2025. That’s a procedural holding pattern, not a rejection: bills in North Carolina’s Rules committee can sit for a long time without either advancing to a floor vote or being formally killed. As of this writing, HB13 has neither passed nor died. It simply hasn’t moved since late September.

That distinction matters for anyone tracking this closely. A bill that’s tabled or dies in committee, like Pennsylvania’s HB1780, is a closed question until someone reintroduces it next session. A bill sitting in Rules with three committee substitutes behind it is a live one that could clear committee on relatively short notice. If HB13 moves, North Carolina’s 2% cap would be meaningfully stricter than the 3%/4% network defaults most other states operate under.

What This Means If You’re Charged a Surcharge in North Carolina

Three things are worth checking the next time a North Carolina merchant adds a credit card fee at checkout:

• Was it disclosed before you paid? Signage at the entrance and at the register, or a clear notice before online checkout completes, is a network rule requirement. No notice at all is the most common violation.
• Does it show up as its own line on the receipt? A surcharge quietly built into the sticker price rather than itemized is non-compliant even where surcharging itself is legal.
• Does the percentage look reasonable? Above 3-4% of the transaction is outside what either network permits today, regardless of what the merchant claims their processing cost is. If HB13 eventually becomes law, that ceiling drops to 2% for any North Carolina transaction.

If a surcharge fails any of those tests, the complaint path is the NC Department of Justice’s online consumer complaint form, not a chargeback. A chargeback disputes whether you received what you paid for, not whether a fee was properly disclosed.

The Card Math: Why a Flat-Rate Card Blunts the Hit

If you’re paying a surcharge either way, the card in your wallet changes how much of it you claw back. A flat 2% cash-back card cancels out roughly two-thirds of a 3% Visa surcharge and half of a 4% Mastercard surcharge, a meaningfully better outcome than a card earning 1% or a debit card earning nothing at all.

The Citi Double Cash Card earns a flat 2% on every purchase (1% when you buy, 1% when you pay it off) with no annual fee and no category tracking to manage. It isn’t built for surcharge situations specifically, nothing is, but its flat, uncapped rate makes it one of the more reliable ways to offset a fee you can’t avoid, especially compared to a card whose bonus categories don’t include “paying a merchant surcharge.”

Bottom Line

North Carolina has no surcharge law today, but unlike its neighbors this isn’t a settled question: HB13’s 2% cap is still moving through committee, not dead. Check the receipt, check the signage, and watch this one, because if it clears Rules, North Carolina’s surcharge limit would drop below what Visa and Mastercard currently allow.

FAQ

Q: Is it illegal for a store to charge a credit card fee in North Carolina?
A: No. North Carolina has no state law banning or capping surcharges today. It’s legal as long as the merchant follows Visa or Mastercard’s disclosure and cap rules, whichever network the card runs on.

Q: What is House Bill 13 and has it passed?
A: HB13 would cap North Carolina merchant credit card surcharges at 2% of the transaction. It was filed January 29, 2025, has gone through three committee substitutes, and was last re-referred to the Rules, Calendar, and Operations Committee on September 23, 2025. It has not passed and has not been formally killed.

Q: What’s the maximum surcharge a North Carolina merchant can legally charge right now?
A: Whichever is lower: the card network’s cap (3% for Visa, 4% for Mastercard) or the merchant’s actual cost of accepting the card. If HB13 becomes law, the ceiling drops to 2% statewide.

Q: Where do I complain about an improperly disclosed surcharge?
A: The North Carolina Department of Justice takes complaints online through its consumer complaint form, or by phone at 1-877-5-NO-SCAM.

Q: Does this apply to debit cards too?
A: Network surcharge rules are specific to credit cards. Federal law (the Durbin Amendment) separately restricts debit card surcharges, and merchants that surcharge debit transactions the same way they do credit are on shakier ground.

For how the other 49 states handle this, see our state-by-state credit card surcharge law breakdown.