From 2 to 4: HB 3041 Stops Pretending

When we first wrote about House Bill 3041 in January, the worry was a single word. The bill had quietly flipped the surcharge cap from the lesser of 2% or actual cost to the greater of the two — turning a consumer protection inside out while leaving the familiar "2%" in place to keep anyone from looking too hard.

This week the Senate Business and Insurance Committee looked plenty hard, and decided the only thing wrong with the bill was that the number wasn't big enough.

The committee substitute that cleared on April 16 keeps the inverted "greater of" language intact and strikes the two percent, writing four percent in its place. So the floor that was guaranteed to every merchant on every card transaction just doubled. Read the operative line now and it authorizes a surcharge of up to the greater of 4% or actual cost — which means a seller may add four percent to your bill for the act of paying with a card, on a service that costs most merchants somewhere around 2.6% to accept. The surcharge is no longer tethered to cost in any direction. It floats a full point and a half above what the thing actually costs, and the customer makes up the difference.

It's worth saying plainly how far outside the lines four percent sits. The card networks — the supposed heavies in this whole drama — cap surcharges at 3% for Visa and 4% for Mastercard, and never above the merchant's real cost. Oklahoma's committee substitute would bless a posted surcharge that meets Mastercard's outer limit and exceeds Visa's entirely, while throwing out the actual-cost discipline both networks require. The state would be authorizing a fee higher than the card companies themselves allow, and calling it consumer policy.

There's a quieter line in the substitute worth flagging too. The committee widened the list of entities permitted to charge "service fees" to include public school districts and technology-center districts. Tucked into a surcharge bill, that's an invitation for the surcharge logic to follow Oklahomans into places they can't shop around — the school lunch account, the enrollment portal, the votech tuition payment. A family can decline to surcharge themselves at a store by paying cash. It is harder to pay the eighth-grade lunch bill in nickels.

We understand the case the merchants are making — that premium rewards cards cost more than two percent to accept, and they'd like to recover it. Fair enough. Current law already lets them recover their actual cost up to a sensible ceiling. What the four-percent "greater of" does is something different: it converts a cost-recovery provision into a profit center and guarantees the markup in statute. The honest version of this bill restores the word "lesser" and lets sellers recover what cards truly cost them. The version on its way to the Senate floor doubles down instead — and asks Oklahoma shoppers to cover the bet.

The simplest fix is the one the committee skipped: cap the surcharge at the cost. Everything past that point is just a number looking for a wallet.