Pennsylvania has no law of its own that specifically regulates credit card surcharges. A bill that would have created one, House Bill 1780, the “Transparent Payment Fees Act,” was tabled in committee on September 8, 2026, five days before this was checked. Until something replaces it, what actually governs a surcharge you see on a Pennsylvania receipt is a general consumer-protection statute plus the private rules Visa and Mastercard already impose on every merchant that accepts their cards.

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. That’s the entire economic logic behind it, and it’s also why both networks cap the surcharge at the merchant’s actual cost: the rule exists to stop surcharging from becoming a hidden profit center rather than a cost pass-through.

What Actually Applies Right Now

Pennsylvania’s Unfair Trade Practices and Consumer Protection Law (73 P.S. 201-1 et seq.) is the state’s general deceptive-practices statute. Reading the full text turns up zero mention of credit card surcharges, checkout fees, or payment-method fees of any kind. It was never written with this in mind. What it does give consumers is a broad hook: if a merchant charges a fee in a way that’s deceptive or that misrepresents what the customer is paying for, that’s a UTPCPL violation regardless of the fee’s name, and the Attorney General’s Bureau of Consumer Protection can act on it.

The more specific rules come from the card networks themselves, not the state:

• Visa caps surcharges at 3% of the transaction (reduced from 4% effective April 15, 2023).
• 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 at the point of checkout online).
• The surcharge has to appear as its own line item on the receipt, not folded silently into the listed price.
• The merchant must notify its acquiring bank before it starts surcharging at all.

None of this is Pennsylvania-specific. It’s the same network rulebook that applies in every state where surcharging is legal, and Pennsylvania has never passed anything narrower or stricter on top of it.

The Bill That Would Have Changed This

HB1780, introduced by Rep. Manuel Guzman during the 2025-2026 session, would have written a Pennsylvania-specific surcharge law into the UTPCPL for the first time: a requirement to disclose any credit card surcharge before the transaction completes, a hard cap at the merchant’s actual processing cost, and enforcement routed through the Bureau of Consumer Protection with penalties to the state’s General Fund. In substance it would have converted network rules that only Visa and Mastercard currently enforce into something a state regulator could act on directly.

The bill sat in committee for over a year after its August 2025 introduction and was laid on the table on September 8, 2026. Tabling isn’t a formal defeat, a bill can in theory be taken back up, but a bill that goes to the table in one session typically does not move again without being reintroduced from scratch in the next one. For now, Pennsylvania consumers are back to relying on network rules and a general-purpose consumer statute that was never written with this problem in mind.

What This Means If You’re Charged a Surcharge in Pennsylvania

Three things are worth checking the next time a Pennsylvania 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 you check out online, 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, regardless of what the merchant claims their processing cost is.

If a surcharge fails any of those tests, the complaint path is the Bureau of Consumer Protection’s online complaint form, not a lawsuit and 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 going to pay a surcharge anyway, which card is in your wallet changes how much of it you get back. A flat 2% cash-back card cancels out roughly two-thirds of a 3% Visa surcharge and half of a 4% Mastercard surcharge, which is a meaningfully better outcome than a card earning 1% or a debit card earning nothing.

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. It’s not a card built for surcharge situations specifically, nothing is, but its flat, uncapped rate makes it one of the more effective ways to offset a fee you can’t avoid, compared to a card that only earns its higher rate in categories that don’t include “paying a merchant fee.”

Bottom Line

Pennsylvania has no dedicated credit card surcharge law, and the bill that would have created one just died in committee. What actually protects you is Visa and Mastercard’s own disclosure and cap rules, backed by the state’s general consumer-protection statute. Check the receipt, check the signage, and complain to the Bureau of Consumer Protection if either is missing.

FAQ

Q: Is it illegal for a store to charge a credit card fee in Pennsylvania?
A: No. Pennsylvania has no state law banning surcharges. 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 happened to the bill that would have regulated this?
A: House Bill 1780, the “Transparent Payment Fees Act,” was introduced in August 2025 and tabled in committee on September 8, 2026. It is not currently moving through the legislature.

Q: What’s the maximum surcharge a Pennsylvania merchant can legally charge?
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.

Q: Where do I complain about an improperly disclosed surcharge?
A: The Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Bureau of Consumer Protection takes complaints online through their consumer complaint form.

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.