You know them as Apple Pay, Google Wallet, and PayPal: digital wallets are everywhere, driving transactions on phones and web browsers around the world. According to Worldpay’s 2026 Global Payments Report, digital wallets now hold a substantial share of e-commerce in North America, at 40% in the U.S. and 32% in Canada. But the rise of digital wallets doesn’t mean merchants are escaping credit card costs. As digital wallets store credit or debit card information, most digital wallet transactions are funded by a credit card sitting behind the scenes, incurring the same processing fees – or higher – as any credit card payment.
With digital wallet adoption increasing, merchants face an important question: How can they embrace digital wallet acceptance while maintaining control over rising payment acceptance costs?
New Technology, New Compliance Challenges
While a digital wallet serves as the payment initiation method, the actual transaction is processed through the card networks. For example, a Visa credit card stored in Apple Pay is still a Visa credit card transaction. This distinction matters because surcharge eligibility and compliance requirements are determined by the underlying payment card.
Identifying eligible transactions becomes significantly more complex when payment credentials are tokenized through digital wallets, making it more difficult to determine whether a surcharge can be applied compliantly and what jurisdictions apply
Without accurate transaction-level intelligence, merchants risk either failing to recover eligible processing costs or exposing themselves to compliance concerns.
But digital wallets make fee recovery more important than ever, because in some cases they are raising costs. While digital wallets currently don’t charge merchants additional fees, Apple has charged issuing banks for use of Apple Pay. Fees like these raise the cost of transactions broadly, making surcharging an even more in-demand tool for keeping costs under control.
Extending Fee Recovery to Digital Wallets
InterPayments now supports digital wallet surcharging, helping merchants recover processing fees while maintaining compliance and supporting modern payment experiences.
InterPayments utilizes a multi-sourced card database to ensure full compliance with state/provincial, federal, and card brand regulations, backed by 24/7/365 transaction reporting and contractual indemnification. Surcharges are clearly communicated to customers before payment is initiated, offering full payment transparency.
InterPayments certifies merchants before going live, ensuring enablement across all teams involved with surcharging.
The InterPayments managed surcharge solution is built for seamless deployment and is already integrated with many popular ERPs that can be connected to digital wallets, including Netsuite, Salesforce, and Microsoft Dynamics. By combining compliance expertise with flexible integrations, InterPayments helps organizations modernize payment operations while navigating the complexities of surcharge management.
Navigating the Shift to Digital Wallets
For many merchants, adapting to digital wallet payments can be approached in three practical steps:
- Understanding their current payment landscape: Begin by gaining clarity on how digital wallets impact their existing payment acceptance setup. Do existing systems work with them? Do their customers want to use them? How do they impact fee structures and compliance risk?
- Defining the payment strategy: If digital wallets could be a meaningful volume of transactions, merchants will want to evaluate how they can be accepted without disrupting the customer experience.
- Identifing the resources needed for compliant surcharging: Merchants who choose to surcharge must do so compliantly while maintaining a positive customer experience. Maintaining federal and state compliance requires investment in multi-jurisdiction legal review, along with ongoing monthly counsel support to interpret rule changes and exceptions. The surcharge solution must accurately calculate and apply surcharges in real time without manual effort.
Payment providers must be able to answer these questions for their customers. Partnering with a Managed Surcharge Provider provides those answers and helps simplify the complexity of compliant surcharging. The right partner maximizes fee recovery while managing evolving surcharge compliance requirements and maintaining a consistent payment experience.
InterPayments, the leading Managed Surcharge Provider, enables merchants to put these principles into practice at scale by delivering compliant cost recovery, transparent customer communication, and ongoing payment efficiency.
Defining the Best Payments Strategy
Digital wallets are not replacing card payments, they are reshaping how card payments are delivered. This shift reduces friction, strengthens security through tokenization, and enables faster checkout.
While the consumer experience is becoming simpler, the underlying payments landscape is growing more complex. Card networks rules and regulatory requirements are continuously evolving and sometimes overlap. Merchants and their payment providers must stay informed of these changes to stay compliant and avoid potential fines.
As consumers continue adopting new payment experiences, payment acceptance strategies must evolve alongside them. InterPayments helps navigate this evolving landscape through managed surcharge solutions that adapt to changing regulations and complex network requirements.
Contact InterPayments to learn how compliant fee recovery can support digital wallet acceptance across your payment ecosystem.