Credit card surcharge & payment methods
You can recover most of your card-processing cost with a surcharge — but the card networks require advance notice and some states don't allow it. DeweyIQ handles both for you.
Turn on the surcharge
Settings → Payments → Credit Card Surcharge. Flip it on and enter a percentage (max 3.00% — the Visa network cap). It's added only to credit-card payments; ACH bank payments are never surcharged.
The 30-day notice period
Card networks require ~30 days' advance notice before you start surcharging. When you first enable it, DeweyIQ sets a start date 30 days out and shows it in an amber banner. Until that date, customers are NOT charged a card fee and won't see one at checkout — the switch is on, but the fee is dormant. After the date, the banner turns green and the fee applies automatically. Disabling and re-enabling later starts a fresh 30-day clock.
Editing just the percentage on an already-active surcharge does not restart the notice period.
States where it's skipped
Surcharging is banned or restricted in some states. The 'Excluded states' chips (default MN, CA, NY, ME, MA, CT) list states where a customer is never surcharged, based on their billing state — even while the surcharge is on. Add or remove states with the chip editor. Customers with no billing state on file are surcharged by default, so set billing state on customer records if you need strict control.
Let customers dodge the fee with ACH
On the payment page customers can pay by bank account (ACH) instead of card — no surcharge, and cheaper for you on almost any invoice: ACH is 0.8% capped at $5 versus 2.9% + 30¢ for cards. Bank accounts verify instantly via Stripe Financial Connections ($1.50 one-time, billed to you by Stripe), or fall back to free micro-deposits that take a couple of days. That $1.50 is charged once when the customer first links their bank — AutoPay reuses it forever after, so on a recurring account it pays for itself immediately: a customer billed $110/month costs about $41.88/year on card versus $12.06 on ACH. It's only a close call on a single one-off invoice under about $60. Saved bank accounts work for AutoPay just like cards.
Apple Pay & Google Pay
Both appear automatically in the payment box once your Stripe account is connected — nothing to set up. Apple Pay is registered for your domains the moment Stripe onboarding completes; Google Pay needs no setup at all. They're just faster ways for customers to pay the same invoice, and they settle as card payments at card rates. If you'd rather not offer them, you can switch them off in your own Stripe Dashboard under Settings → Payments → Payment methods.
We're here.
Ask Dewey in plain English, or tell us what feature you wish existed.
Still stuck?
Ask Dewey — it knows the whole platform. Or send us a message and we'll reply within a business day.
