Home / Dual Pricing / Texas
Texas has a statute banning credit card surcharges and a federal court ruling that the statute is unconstitutional. Dual pricing works either way, because it is not a surcharge. Here is how it is actually built.
The short answer is yes, and the reason is a definitional one rather than a loophole. Texas law prohibits imposing a surcharge on a credit card transaction. A surcharge starts from a cash price and adds something to it. Dual pricing does the opposite: the card price is the listed price, and cash buys a discount off it.
The statute itself is on shaky ground. A federal court has held the prohibition unconstitutional as applied to merchants, and it has not been enforced against ordinary retail businesses since. But we would rather not build a client’s pricing on the outcome of an appeal, and we do not have to.
So the Texas answer is the same as the answer we would give in a state with no statute at all: display the card price as the price, offer a lower cash price, disclose it plainly, and keep the receipt honest. That structure has never been the thing Texas law was aimed at.
Where Texas stands
Last reviewed 1 September 2026. General information about how we configure systems, not legal advice. Confirm your position with your attorney before launching.
In Texas the wording is part of the compliance, not just the marketing. A program described in your own signage as a surcharge is a program that has argued itself into the statute.
On the menu and the shelf
The card price is the listed price. The cash price sits beside it as the lower figure. On a barbecue board or a taqueria wall menu that usually means two columns, and it needs to be legible from where people queue.
At the point of sale
Signage that says a cash discount is available, in those words. The POS shows both figures on the customer-facing screen before the guest chooses how to pay.
On the receipt
What they paid, how they paid, and what the cash price was. Plain language, no abbreviations that need explaining.
An illustrative example for a Texas quick-service or casual room. We model your real numbers from your last three statements before recommending anything.
Worked example · Texas
Model it
Three statements, run against a dual-price structure, so you can see the number before you decide.
File the notice
The card networks require notice before a merchant begins. Your processor files it and we confirm it went in.
Reprice everything
Menu boards, printed menus, online ordering, third-party delivery listings and the POS item file. Delivery listings are the one Texas operators most often forget.
Train the counter
One sentence, said the same way by everyone, describing it as a cash discount. We write it and rehearse it before go-live.
Through a cash discount or dual pricing program, yes, and that is what we build. The statute prohibiting surcharges has been held unconstitutional as applied to merchants, but dual pricing does not rely on that ruling because it is not a surcharge to begin with.
A surcharge starts at the cash price and adds a fee. A cash discount starts at the card price as the listed price and takes money off for cash. The customer often pays an identical amount either way. Only one of the two structures is what the Texas statute describes.
Yes. The networks require written notice before a merchant begins, and your processor normally files it. This is separate from anything the state does or does not require.
The price difference applies to the item subtotal, not to the tax lines. Mixed beverage taxes have to be configured as their own class in the POS, and this is the single most common misconfiguration we find on Texas systems we inherit.
It works the same way and is often easier, because there is one board rather than a menu, a delivery listing and a website to keep in sync. The board carries both prices and the mobile reader shows both on screen.
Send us your last three statements and we will show you what this looks like for your Texas business before you commit to anything.
