Six years of not knowing
Oklahoma spent six years in a gap that nobody could price. The state's surcharge ban stayed on the books even after the Supreme Court found in 2018 that bans like it run into the First Amendment, and the Attorney General's December 2019 opinion concluded that the ban held up in some situations and not others. Merchants were left reading a statute nobody could say how it would be enforced.
Senate Bill 677 closes the gap. It passed the legislature in May 2025, became law without the Governor's signature on May 28, 2025, and takes effect on November 1, 2025. It repeals the old prohibition in Title 14A and replaces it with a regulated framework: surcharging is legal, but only inside three conditions and three sets of notice rules that are strict enough to trip people up.
Reference only, not legal advice. Talk to an Oklahoma attorney before turning on a surcharge program, and verify the current text of the statute directly.
What SB 677 permits
Three conditions have to hold at the same time. Miss one and the surcharge is not a paperwork problem, it is a violation.
- Credit cards only. A surcharge may apply to credit card transactions, not to debit or prepaid cards.
- A genuine choice of payment. A surcharge is permitted only if you also accept cash, ACH or check. If a customer has no other way to pay you, there is no surcharge to add.
- The lesser of 2% or your actual cost. This is not a flat 2% allowance. If accepting a given card costs you less than 2%, that lower number is your ceiling.
That third condition is the one most merchants get wrong. The cap tracks your real cost of acceptance, so charging 2% across the board is non-compliant the moment your own cost is lower.
Where you have to say it
SB 677 requires clear notice before the customer commits to paying, and the mechanics change by channel. This is where most of the exposure sits, because the posting is what a complaint or an examination sees first.
| Channel | What the law requires |
|---|---|
| In person | Notice at the point of entry and at the point of sale, so a customer knows before joining the line. |
| Online | Notice on the home page and on the checkout page. |
| Phone | Verbal notice before you complete the sale. |
The statute uses the phrase “clearly and conspicuously” without defining it. That leaves the standard to be settled by complaints and court rulings, which means two merchants with identical signage can end up with different outcomes. If you add a surcharge, keep dated photographs of your entry and counter signage and a dated screenshot of your home page and checkout disclosure. The evidence is cheap and it is the only thing that answers a challenge later.
Why 2% will not cover your cost
Even a fully compliant surcharge recovers less than it looks like it should.
- The expensive cards sit above the cap. American Express and premium rewards cards routinely cost more than 2% to accept. Because the cap is the lesser of 2% or your cost, those transactions leave the difference with you.
- Debit and prepaid cannot be surcharged at all. Card network rules prohibit surcharging debit and prepaid, and those rules apply on top of state law, so a debit-heavy mix gets almost no relief.
- Uniform pricing works against you. Your processor has to price consistently, which means low-cost transactions get averaged up. You pay more on the cheap volume to fund the expensive volume.
- Multi-state operations multiply the paperwork. Every state you sell into has its own cap, its own disclosure wording and its own definition of clear notice.
So the math lands like this: you collect a fraction of your cost, you take on signage and disclosure obligations, and a share of your customers react badly to the line on the receipt. The processors are the only party that wins.
Cash discounts are still allowed, and uncapped
Section 14A-2-211 survives SB 677 and continues to permit a discount that induces payment by cash, check or similar means. The bill expands that rule and sets no cap on the size of a discount, which is a wider path than the surcharge itself.
One caution before you reprice. Card network rules sit on top of state law and limit how far you can price differently by payment type, so a practice that is legal in Oklahoma can still breach your acceptance agreements. Read those terms before you post two prices. And treat cash as having its own costs, not as a free option.
The cheaper move
A surcharge treats a pricing problem as a customer-relations problem. The cheaper sequence runs the other way.
- Find what you actually pay. A statement read line by line shows markups, inflated interchange pass-throughs and unnecessary fees that a flat-rate quote hides.
- Cost-average what is left across every payment method and treasury service, then compare it against revenue.
- Adjust your base price by that number. It usually lands well below 2%, which clears the Oklahoma cap with room to spare, needs no signage, no verbal script and no per-channel disclosure, and never appears on a receipt as a surcharge.
We call this Blended Inclusive Pricing: one price that carries your real payment cost, applies to every customer the same way and stays inside both state law and network rules. It is the difference between recovering part of your cost under a cap and covering all of it with no compliance exposure.
Our two cents
SB 677 settles the legality question and leaves the practical one open. Oklahoma merchants now know what they may charge, and also how much of their cost a 2% ceiling cannot reach. If the surcharge you are allowed would be smaller than the markup sitting on your statement, fix the markup first.
VeriFee reads your statement, finds the hidden costs and shows you the real number. No switching, no disruption to how you take payment. Send us a statement and you will know what processing actually costs your business, whether or not you ever add a surcharge.
