Louisiana · Surcharging generally permitted
Merchant services in New Orleans, LA
Among the most hospitality-concentrated economies in the country, with heavy bar, restaurant and event volume and the dispute profile that follows.
Louisiana · zero-cost position
Surcharging generally permitted
Our working reading as of August 2026. Not legal advice, and verified per engagement.
Credit-card surcharging is generally reported as permitted in this state, subject to the card-brand rules: the surcharge may not exceed your actual cost of acceptance, it may never be applied to debit or prepaid cards, and it must be disclosed at the point of entry and again at the point of sale. A cash-discount program is also available if you prefer that framing.
Louisiana permits surcharging. New Orleans is among the most hospitality-concentrated economies in the country, which brings both heavy card-present volume and an elevated dispute rate from bar and event transactions.
Concentrated in New Orleans
Every metro has a handful of business types where the payment economics are unusually consequential. In New Orleans these are the ones we see most:
Bars & nightclubs
$32–$120 typical ticket
Restaurants
$28–$65 typical ticket
Caterers
$800–$12,000 typical ticket
Chicago-built software, New Orleans clients
EY Loma Solutions is a Chicago practice, and the company and all of its software are lovingly designed and built here. When we build a New Orleans business a custom CRM with payments inside it, that work is done by our own people in Chicago — never offshored, and never white-labeled from somebody else's platform.
New Orleans by business type
Every business type we work with in New Orleans
Each page covers the payment economics specific to that business type, plus the zero-cost structure that fits this state.
Questions
New Orleans and Louisiana merchant questions
Is credit card surcharging legal in Louisiana?
Louisiana permits surcharging. New Orleans is among the most hospitality-concentrated economies in the country, which brings both heavy card-present volume and an elevated dispute rate from bar and event transactions. Credit-card surcharging is generally reported as permitted in this state, subject to the card-brand rules: the surcharge may not exceed your actual cost of acceptance, it may never be applied to debit or prepaid cards, and it must be disclosed at the point of entry and again at the point of sale. A cash-discount program is also available if you prefer that framing. That is our working reading as of August 2026, not legal advice — we verify the current position as part of every engagement, because this area of state law has moved repeatedly through litigation.
Can a New Orleans business really process cards at 0% cost?
In Louisiana we would structure it as a surcharge or cash discount program. The cost of acceptance is presented to the cardholder rather than absorbed by you, within the card-brand ceiling and never on debit or prepaid cards. We install the disclosure, signage and receipt logic as part of the work, because that is where most zero-cost programs fail.
Are you actually located in New Orleans?
No — we are a Chicago practice, and we say so plainly rather than pretending to a local office. We work with merchants across the United States, and every engagement runs identically regardless of geography: statements in, arithmetic out, in writing. All of our software is designed and built in Chicago by our own team.
What does a New Orleans statement review involve?
Send your three most recent merchant statements. We derive your effective rate, isolate the transactions that downgraded, and separate interchange and assessments — which are fixed for every processor — from the processor margin that is actually negotiable. It costs nothing, and if you are already priced competitively we will tell you that.
Do you place high-risk merchant accounts in Louisiana?
Yes. High-risk placement is underwriting work rather than rate shopping: we build the file against the acquirer's specific objection, negotiate reserve percentage and release schedule before signature, and set up redundant acquiring so a single category policy change does not stop your settlement.
Other metros
- Chicago, IL
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New Orleans merchants: find out what your statement is not telling you.
Surcharging generally permitted in Louisiana. The review costs you nothing.