Dual Pricing

Platform-neutral reference on dual pricing and its sibling models: what they are, how they differ, the rules governing them, and the merchant and customer experience implications.

A Note on Terminology

"Dual pricing" is used in two related but distinct senses, and this document is careful to keep them separate:

1. As an umbrella concept — offering different prices for the same product or service based on the customer's payment method. This is the general industry usage and the reason this document is titled "dual pricing."
2. As a specific pricing model — one of three models (alongside cash discount and surcharge) where both the cash price and the card price are visibly displayed side by side from the start.

Throughout this document, "dual pricing" refers to the specific model except where explicitly called out as the umbrella concept. The three specific models discussed are Dual Pricing, Cash Discount, and Surcharge — they are legally, operationally, and perceptually distinct and should not be used interchangeably.

Why Merchants Adopt Payment-Method Pricing

In 2023, US merchants paid $224 billion in card processing fees — a 30% jump year-over-year (volumes have continued to grow since). For businesses with thin margins, even a 3% processing fee represents a significant profit leak. When implemented correctly, any of the three models can recover 70–90% of processing costs.

How it differs from a uniform price increase: Payment-method pricing is transparent — customers who want to avoid the card markup can do so by paying cash (or, in the case of dual pricing, by seeing both prices before they decide). Raising all prices uniformly to cover card fees is opaque and gives customers no choice.