Credit Card Checkout Fees: Have You Noticed Them?

Forty states, including North Carolina, now allow merchants to charge an extra "checkout fee" when customers use their credit cards, according to the International Business Times.

The merchants got that authority starting in the last Sunday of January after settlement in a case involving millions of merchants against Visa, MasterCard and nine major credit card issuing banks.

The case involved claims of price fixing among issuers on credit card fees charged to merchants. In the settlement, credit card issuers agreed to reduce those "swipe fees" for eight months. CNN Money says the settlement also let retailers add a surcharge if a customer uses a credit card to cover the processing costs of about 1.5 percent to 3 percent of the purchase.

The fee is illegal in 10 states: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Kansas, Maine, Massachusetts, New York, Oklahoma and Texas.

For North Carolina the additional surcharge could happen, but the National Retail Federation tells NBC News that it hasn't come across any retailers who plan to levy the fee.

"We have discussed the settlement with many, many merchants, and not a single merchant we have spoken to plans to surcharge," Craig Shearman, spokesman for the National Retail Federation, said in a statement reported by NBC News.

Have you noticed any fees like this in your recent shopping? Do you think it would be fair if retailers charged it? Would it affect your use of credit cards in your shopping?

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