Oklahoma Senate
Senator Brooks successfully spearheads effort to bring modern pricing practices to Oklahoma
Sen. Brooks sought the Attorney General’s opinion with the goal of allowing more flexible payment options in Oklahoma that offer benefits to both businesses and consumers. In light of significant developments in federal constitutional law that bear directly on the legality of Oklahoma’s “No-Surcharge” statute, Attorney General Hunter concluded that the Oklahoma state law that bars nationally common pricing practices unconstitutionally restricts free speech.
The decision allows businesses to apply credit card surcharges as long as they make the required consumer disclosures, giving state merchants more flexibility on how they manage their costs.
“As a result of this restriction, both businesses and consumers in Oklahoma have been denied information that would help each group make important decisions about how they buy and sell products and services. This opinion today gives consumers more choices on how to pay and will also give merchants more flexibility on how they manage their costs,” Brooks said.CardX, an innovative technology company that automates compliance in merchant payments, worked closely with Sen. Brooks to identify the issue and call out how this dated statute was impeding the ability of merchants and consumers to adopt a mutually beneficial modern payments technology.
For many businesses, credit card fees are the second-highest operating cost after payroll. But merchants want to accept cards because in many industries, offering customers the option to pay with credit has become crucial to continued success.“This result in Oklahoma solidifies an inevitable payments industry makeover,” said Jonathan Razi, CardX Founder and CEO. “Until today, Oklahoma was one of five states where we couldn’t serve businesses, and this decision means that 94% of the United States by population is now open to credit card surcharging.”
