The short answer
New Brunswick merchants can apply a surcharge of up to 2.4% on credit card transactions, or their effective merchant discount rate — whichever is lower. The province has no specific surcharging ban and no surcharge-specific provincial legislation. New Brunswick's Consumer Protection Act requires that prices and fees be disclosed clearly and honestly. Get the disclosure right — including bilingual signage where appropriate — and you're fully compliant.
Surcharging legal? Yes, since October 6, 2022.
Maximum surcharge: 2.4% or effective MDR, whichever is lower.
Provincial restrictions: None specific to surcharging — disclosure must comply with the Consumer Protection Act.
Debit/Interac surcharging: Not permitted.
Bilingual considerations: Officially bilingual province; bilingual disclosure recommended in many regions.
Notice required: 30 days written notice to Visa and Mastercard before you start.
What New Brunswick law says about surcharging
New Brunswick has no provincial law banning or capping credit card surcharges. The federal framework — established by the 2022 settlement between Canadian merchants and the card networks — applies in full. That means the 2.4% cap, the 30-day notice requirement, and the network registration process all apply to NB merchants exactly as they would in Nova Scotia or Ontario.
What New Brunswick does have is the Consumer Protection Act, which prohibits unfair business practices including misleading or hidden fees. Surcharging itself is not unfair — but failing to disclose it before a customer commits to a purchase is. The disclosure standards required by Visa and Mastercard already exceed what the NB Act demands. Follow the network rules and you're covered provincially too.
New Brunswick is a 15% HST province, so the receipt math is clean: subtotal, HST, total. Adding a clearly labelled surcharge keeps the receipt to four lines including the total — easier for customers to scan than provinces showing GST and PST as separate items. What sets NB apart is the bilingual context. The Acadian Peninsula, the Madawaska region, Moncton, Edmundston, and a meaningful slice of the rest of the province conduct business in French as their primary or co-equal language. The Visa and Mastercard disclosure rules don't dictate language, but customer expectation and the spirit of NB's Official Languages Act do. A surcharge sign in English only — at a restaurant in Caraquet, a retail store in Bouctouche, or a service operator in Edmundston — is going to land worse than the same sign in both languages, and may invite complaints that the English-only equivalent in another province wouldn't.
The four rules every NB merchant must follow
- Cap your surcharge correctly. 2.4% is the absolute ceiling. If your effective discount rate (the average percentage you actually pay your processor for credit card acceptance) is below 2.4%, your cap is your effective rate — not 2.4%. Ask your processor for your blended effective rate before setting your surcharge.
- Surcharge credit only. Debit cards, Interac, Visa Debit, and prepaid cards cannot be surcharged in New Brunswick or anywhere else in Canada.
- Disclose at the point of entry and the point of sale — bilingually where appropriate. A sign at the door, on the menu, on the website, or on the work-order estimate. A second disclosure on the terminal screen, the checkout page, or the printed bill. In Francophone-majority and bilingual regions, signage and receipts in both English and French will land better than English-only.
- Show the surcharge as a separate line item. On every receipt — paper or email — the surcharge must appear as its own line, not bundled into the subtotal or the HST.
How to register to surcharge in New Brunswick
Three steps, all of which can be done in an afternoon:
Step 1 — Notify Visa
Visa requires merchants to register through their online portal at least 30 days before applying a surcharge. You'll need your business name, address, contact info, number of locations, channel (in-person, online, or both), and whether you'll surcharge at the brand level or product level. Brand level is simpler — same percentage across all Visa credit products.
Step 2 — Notify Mastercard
Mastercard runs a similar 30-day notification process through its own merchant portal. The form launched in September 2022 and takes about 10 minutes to complete. You can submit Visa and Mastercard notifications on the same day; the 30-day clock for each runs in parallel.
Step 3 — Tell your processor
Your acquirer or payment processor needs to enable surcharging on your terminal or gateway. If your processor doesn't support compliant surcharging — meaning the terminal can apply the surcharge automatically, distinguish credit from debit, and print it as a separate line — you'll need to either upgrade your equipment or move to a processor that supports it. For NB merchants serving Francophone customers, also confirm the terminal can display surcharge prompts in French.
"In New Brunswick, the merchants who roll out surcharging cleanly are the ones who treat the bilingual signage as a real piece of work — not a translation afterthought. A clean French-language disclosure isn't compliance theatre; it's how trust is preserved with half your customer base."
What it costs to NOT surcharge in New Brunswick
The average NB small business with $400,000 in annual credit card volume pays roughly $9,200 a year in processing fees — about 2.3% on a typical mix of credit and debit. A compliant 2.4% surcharge program recovers most of that, while debit and cash payments stay free of any added fee for the customer. For a Moncton or Saint John restaurant doing $1.2M a year, the recovery climbs past $25,000 annually. For tourism operators along the Bay of Fundy or the Acadian Coast, where summer concentrates the year's volume into a four- or five-month window, a single season of recovery often funds off-season operating costs that historically squeezed cash flow.
Use our free surcharge calculator to estimate your savings based on your monthly volume.
Industry-specific guides for NB merchants
- Restaurants & cafés in New Brunswick
- New Brunswick retail stores
- Lawyers, accountants & professional services
- Contractors and trades
- Dental practices
- Medical practices & clinics
Common questions from NB merchants
Can I surcharge online sales in New Brunswick?
Yes. Card-not-present (online) transactions can be surcharged under the same rules as in-person. The disclosure must appear on the checkout page before the customer enters card details, and the surcharge must be itemized in the order confirmation and the email receipt.
Do I need to display my surcharge disclosure in both English and French in New Brunswick?
New Brunswick is Canada's only officially bilingual province. While provincial law doesn't specifically mandate bilingual surcharge signage for private businesses, merchants serving Francophone customers — particularly in the Acadian Peninsula, Moncton, Edmundston, and the Madawaska region — should post bilingual disclosures as a matter of good practice and customer service. A single-language disclosure in a primarily Francophone area can cause friction that bilingual signage avoids entirely.
Do I have to offer a no-surcharge alternative?
Yes — debit and cash. Customers must be able to pay without incurring a surcharge if they choose to. You don't have to accept every payment method, but you do have to offer at least one that doesn't carry a surcharge.
Is surcharging different in Moncton, Saint John, or Fredericton versus rural New Brunswick?
The rules are identical across the province. They apply the same way in Moncton, Saint John, Fredericton, and in every smaller community. What can vary is customer expectation. Customers in the Moncton-Saint John-Fredericton triangle encounter surcharges frequently and tend to absorb them quietly, while smaller-community rollouts in northern New Brunswick and rural areas often benefit from a slightly more deliberate communication approach. The most effective signage in rural NB tends to explain the change in plain terms — and bilingually wherever the local customer base supports it.
Next steps
If you're an NB merchant ready to start surcharging, the path is: confirm your effective discount rate with your processor, decide between brand-level and product-level surcharging, register with Visa and Mastercard, prepare bilingual signage where appropriate, configure your POS, and post your disclosures. The full process can be live in about 35 days from the day you register.
If you'd rather have someone handle the entire setup — including processor switch, POS configuration, bilingual signage templates, and customer communication scripts — many Canadian payment agents specialize in compliant surcharge programs.