How Dealership Surcharging Works, One Tap at a Time
How dealership surcharging works comes down to five steps that run in the time it takes to hand a card back to the customer. An advisor clicks Pay in CDK Drive, the terminal takes it from there, and the system decides credit or debit before anyone at the counter has to think about it. Below is what happens at each step, on the terminal screen and inside the RO.
Five Steps, One Transaction
Every card run through the program moves through the same five steps, in the same order, every time.
None of the five steps needs a calculator, a second screen, or a manual override from your team. The advisor clicks Pay once. Everything after that, reading the card, sorting credit from debit, showing or skipping a fee, and closing the RO, happens on its own. The full walkthrough below covers what your team and the customer each see at every step.
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Click Pay in CDK Drive
One tap starts the whole transaction
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Card Inserted or Tapped
Insert, swipe, or tap, on the terminal already
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Card Type Auto-Detected
Credit or debit, identified instantly
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Credit Prompts, Debit Passes
The fork happens before the customer notices
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Auto-Posts to the RO
Lands on the repair order in real time
Inside Each Step
Here is what actually happens at each of the five steps, walked through the way it runs at the counter.
Step 1: Click Pay in CDK Drive
An advisor closes out a repair order the same way they always have: pull up the RO in CDK Drive, review labor and parts, and click Pay. There is no separate order to open in another system and no side app to switch to first.
The moment that click lands, CDK Drive pushes the total straight to the Ingenico terminal, whether that terminal sits at the cashier stand or rides along on a tablet in the service drive. The terminal wakes up already knowing the amount. Nothing gets keyed in by hand.
Step 2: Card Inserted or Tapped
The customer sees a terminal screen showing the amount that just came off their RO, nothing more. They insert, swipe, or tap their card the same way they would at any counter, with no new habit to learn.
Underneath that screen, the terminal is already running PCI-validated P2PE encryption on the card the instant it is captured. That does not change anything the advisor or the customer sees. It means the raw card number is encrypted before it ever reaches your network, not after.
Step 3: Card Type Auto-Detected
There is nothing for the advisor to select and nothing for the customer to declare. The terminal reads the card and identifies credit versus debit on its own, the same instant it reads the number.
CDK Drive never asks your team to flag the card type or apply a rate by hand. The detection happens inside the terminal, before the payment screen has even changed to the next step.
Step 4: Credit Prompts, Debit Passes
If the card is credit, the terminal shows the customer a clear 3% fee disclosure before anything is charged. One tap accepts it, and the transaction proceeds at the disclosed total.
If the card is debit, prepaid, or a gift card, no fee appears at all. The transaction passes through at the RO total, and the advisor never has to explain a fee that isn't there. Either path takes the same few seconds at the counter.
Step 5: Auto-Posts to the RO
The instant the terminal approves the payment, it posts back to the repair order inside CDK Drive: labor, parts, and the card payment line, together, on the same order.
There is no end of day batch to run and no separate terminal report to match against the RO later. The advisor sees the RO close in real time, and so does the controller, at the same moment.
Credit Pays a Fee. Debit Never Does.
Step 4 is where the surcharge program actually happens. Everything before it runs the same for every card; everything after it depends on which path the terminal detected.
The fork itself takes no time at all, because it isn't a decision your team makes at the counter. The terminal already knows the card type from step 3, so it simply routes the transaction down one of two paths.
| What Happens | Credit | Debit |
|---|---|---|
| Fee shown to the customer | 3%, disclosed at the terminal | None |
| Customer action | One tap to accept | None, the card just runs |
| Your cost | $0 | 1.05% |
A debit, prepaid, or gift card never shows a fee, so every customer keeps a no-fee way to pay. That is also the mechanism behind the compliance and CSI story: read the full breakdown, state by state, on the surcharge program page.
The RO Closes While the Customer Is Still There
Step 5 is not a task for later. It happens in the same second the terminal approves the card.
The moment the terminal approves the payment, whether it carried a 3% credit fee or ran a debit card with no fee at all, it posts straight to the repair order inside CDK Drive. There is no batch to run at the end of the day and no separate terminal report for anyone to match against the RO later.
For the advisor, that means the RO shows closed before the customer has finished putting their card away. For the controller, it means every card payment already sits on its own RO line item with a timestamp, ready at month end instead of waiting to be traced down later.
What the Controller Sees on the Statement
Labor, parts, and the card payment sit on the same order, closed at the same total, in real time. Nothing to trace back three weeks later against a stack of separate terminal receipts.
See the full mechanics behind the push connection that makes this possible on the CDK integration page.
From Signed to Live in Two Weeks
Everything above is what your store runs once the program is live. Here is how it gets there.
Install takes an afternoon. A technician sets the Ingenico Lane 5000 terminals at the cashier stand, in the service drive, at the parts counter, and in F&I, and connects each one to CDK Drive. You are live within two weeks of signing, not months.
Your team is trained on the terminal the same day it goes in, with virtual training available on an ongoing basis after that for a refresher or a new hire. There are no contracts locking you into a term.
The required signage and receipt disclosures ship with the terminals at $0, the same as the hardware itself. Every terminal, every install visit, and every piece of signage runs under one flat $99/mo fee: $0 hardware, $0 setup, no separate line items to negotiate.
What's Actually Included
Ingenico Lane 5000 terminals, PCI-validated P2PE encryption, install, training, signage, and support, all at $0 upfront. See the full pricing breakdown, or how the terminals handle encryption before a card number ever touches your network.
Straight Answers on the Steps
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 doesn't ask an advisor to do anything they don't already do: click Pay, then hand the customer the terminal.
Nothing changes. The surcharge flow only runs on card payments, so a cash or check transaction skips all five steps and closes the same way it always has.
The same five steps run anywhere CDK Drive opens an order or a deal: the service drive, the parts counter, F&I, and the cashier stand at the front desk.
One Ingenico Lane 5000 terminal per counter, included at $0 hardware and $0 setup under the flat $99/mo fee. Nothing to buy separately to get any of the five steps running.
Yes. On the credit path, the 3% fee is disclosed on the terminal screen before the charge goes through, and the customer accepts it with one tap. Debit, prepaid, and gift cards never show a fee at all.
Watch Every Step Run
See the Five Steps on Your Own RO
Book a demo: the full flow running live on a real repair order in CDK Drive, straight answers on install and training timelines, and no pressure. 100+ franchise dealerships nationwide · 20 years in payments · Houston, TX.
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