Sales transaction; maximum permissible surcharge amount for credit cards; maximum permissible service fee amount; effective date.
HB2971 amends Oklahoma’s law governing discounts and surcharges in sales, service, and lease transactions. The bill keeps in place the rule that sellers may offer discounts for payment by cash, check, debit card, or similar means, but it raises the maximum surcharge a seller may impose on a customer who pays by credit card from 2% to 4.5%, or to the seller’s actual credit-card processing cost, whichever is less. It also updates terminology from “retailer” to “seller” for clarity and preserves notice requirements for in-person, online, and telephone transactions.
The bill also creates a separate framework for private educational institutions, private schools, municipalities, and municipal public trusts that charge card-payment service fees. For those entities, the fee is capped at 4.5% of the transaction or actual processing costs, whichever is less, and the bill defines “actual processing costs” as verifiable transaction-specific fees imposed by payment networks, issuing banks, acquiring banks, or payment processors. It expressly excludes overhead, personnel, unrelated technology costs, and profit markups, and requires entities charging such fees to keep supporting documentation for two years and provide it to the Attorney General or State Auditor and Inspector upon request. The bill takes effect November 1, 2026.
HB2971 would amend 14A O.S. Section 2-211 to expand the permissible amount that sellers may add as a credit-card surcharge and to formalize a separate service-fee rule for certain educational and municipal entities. It would affect businesses, schools, municipalities, public trusts, and consumers by allowing higher card-payment pass-through charges while imposing documentation and compliance-review requirements on entities that charge service fees. The bill also authorizes oversight by the Attorney General and State Auditor and Inspector for the new fee documentation provisions.
Based on the available context, the bill appears to have been introduced without recorded committee debate or votes in the provided materials, so there is no documented floor or committee sentiment to assess. The caption and text suggest a policy direction favorable to allowing merchants and public entities to recover more of their card-processing expenses, which may appeal to those concerned about payment processing costs. At the same time, the bill’s consumer-facing surcharge increase could draw scrutiny from those concerned about higher transaction costs for card users.
The main point of contention is likely the increase in the allowable credit-card surcharge from 2% to 4.5%, which shifts more processing cost to card-paying customers. Another likely issue is the bill’s separate treatment of private schools, municipalities, and municipal trusts, which are allowed to charge service fees under a defined “actual processing costs” standard; opponents may question whether the definition is broad enough to prevent hidden markups, while supporters may argue it is necessary to cover real transaction expenses. The added documentation and audit-review requirements appear designed to address those concerns by limiting fees to verifiable costs and enabling enforcement.