Credit Card Surcharges: What Property Managers Need to Know via Property Management Insider

As more and more renters demand the ability to pay their rent with a credit card, property management companies face the challenge of recovering processing costs. Property managers must balance resident retention by offering convenient electronic payment options while recovering processing costs by passing them on to the resident. Until recently, a convenience fee was the only way to pass along those costs to renters. Now there is a second way: credit card surcharges.

Visa and MasterCard recently announced a settlement to a lawsuit filed in 2005 on behalf of seven million merchants. The suit claimed that Visa and MasterCard colluded to increase credit card rates. As part of the settlement, Visa and MasterCard announced in December of 2012 that merchants could add a surcharge to credit card transactions beginning January 27, 2013.

Surcharges sound appealing on the surface; however, the old adage of “the devil is in the details” applies here. Here are some common questions I get from property management companies about credit card surcharges and transaction fees.

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