Dealership Surcharging FAQs

When a customer pays with a credit card, the terminal automatically displays a 3% service fee and asks for acceptance. It is fully compliant with Visa, Mastercard, and state regulations. Debit, prepaid, and gift cards are never surcharged. You pay 1.05% on those.

Surcharging is legal in 47 states, all except Connecticut, Maine, and Massachusetts. The surcharge laws by state table has every state's status and cap. We handle the compliance requirements that come with it, including required signage and receipt disclosures.

They can pay with debit instead, and no surcharge applies. Or they can pay with cash or check. Most customers accept the fee, since they are used to seeing it in other industries.

Correct. Debit, prepaid, and gift cards are never surcharged. You pay 1.05% on those, and your blended cost varies with your card mix. The terminal enforces the exclusion automatically; it is never left to staff to remember.

Nothing. We provide the required signage and receipt disclosures, and the terminal enforces the debit exclusion on its own. Your team never has to make a compliance call at the counter.

The surcharge is refunded automatically and proportionally. A full refund returns the full surcharge along with the original amount. A partial refund returns a proportional share of the surcharge. There is nothing for the cashier to calculate.

Yes. Phone, text-to-pay, and online-link payments run through the same program and the same 3% surcharge, with the same required disclosure. Debit still never carries a surcharge on any of those channels.

Everything. Payment processing platform, Growth Suite marketing tools, PCI compliance management, ongoing support, and virtual training. No hidden fees.

None. The Ingenico Lane 5000 terminals, in-person installation, launch training, compliant signage, and managed PCI compliance are all included, about $2,900 in value at $0.

No contracts. The fee is $99 a month per location, month to month.

Arithmetic, not a promise. Credit fees drop to zero because the customer covers the 3% surcharge, and you keep paying 1.05% on debit. On $400,000 in monthly volume at a 60% credit share, that is $12,000 before versus $1,680 after, an 86% cut. Heavier credit mixes push it toward and past 90%.

Most single-location installs take 2 to 4 hours. Your team is trained the same day, and you are live in CDK Drive within two weeks of signing.

Your team is trained on the terminal the same day it goes in. Virtual training stays available afterward for a refresher or a new hire, and the flow itself does not ask an advisor to do anything they do not already do: click Pay, then hand the customer the terminal.

When you click Pay in CDK Drive, the transaction amount is pushed directly to your Ingenico terminal. The customer completes payment, and it auto-posts back to the RO and your accounting. No re-keying, no reconciliation.

You keep taking payments inside CDK Drive the way you do today. Join our surcharge program and the per-transaction gateway fees you currently pay are fully eliminated. That covers gateway fees specifically, not every fee on your statement.

CDK Drive is our deepest integration, but it is not the only one. We also support dealerships and operations on Bluebird, ProfitNet, TSD, Integrated Rental, RevolutionParts, Xtime, Excede, Solera, and Kerridge, and ERPs including INxSQL, Infor, IntegraERP, Microsoft Dynamics 365, and S2K. Ask us about your specific system.

Point to Point Encryption. The card is encrypted inside the terminal before it ever touches your network. What crosses your network afterward is ciphertext, unreadable without a decryption key that never lives on your systems. Your exposure is zero.

Liability shifts to the solution provider, not your dealership. It also does not matter much in practice: a stolen batch of ciphertext is worthless to a hacker without the decryption key, and that key was never anywhere near your network.

Yes, for dealers processing with DealerPayments. All six tools, reputation, texting, social, CRM, webchat, and email, run under your flat $99 a month with no separate bill for the suite.

No. It is included, not required. Plenty of dealers only use the payments side, and that is fine. The suite is there for the ones who want reviews, texting, and lead follow-up handled without adding another vendor.