Quebec: Payment Rules Every Merchant Should Know

No card fees at the till

The OPC says a merchant cannot charge fees when you use a debit or credit card to pay for a purchase, and those fees cannot be added to the price of a product or service at the time of purchase. It adds that a merchant is not complying with the law even if customers are told at the cash register that an extra amount will be charged because of the payment method, and that a sign or a verbal notice does not entitle the merchant to charge the fee. The OPC says consumers can report merchants who keep doing it. The Financial Consumer Agency of Canada (FCAC) reflects the same line nationally: merchants may add surcharges to credit card transactions except in Quebec. Visa Canada also says provincial or federal law takes precedence over its surcharging rules.

Price presentation

According to the OPC, the advertised price must reflect the total amount the consumer pays, and only taxes such as the GST and QST can be added at checkout. Any card fee program that adds an amount at the till conflicts with that rule. Before you change how prices are shown, for example with a cash discount, get advice specific to your business in Quebec.

The statute the OPC is applying

The OPC's page does not cite a section number, but the rule it describes is section 224 of the Consumer Protection Act (CQLR c. P-40.1). Paragraph (c) of the first paragraph says no merchant, manufacturer or advertiser may, by any means whatever, charge for goods or services a higher price than that advertised. The section then states that for the purposes of that paragraph the price advertised must include the total amount the consumer must pay for the goods or services, that the price advertised need not include the Quebec sales tax or the Goods and Services Tax, and that more emphasis must be put on the price advertised than on the amounts of which the price is made up. Read together, those three sentences are why a card fee added at the till fails in Quebec even when it is disclosed: the fee is part of the total the consumer must pay, so it belonged in the advertised price, and it is not a tax. The same logic is what makes a dual-price display a question for counsel rather than a settled workaround, because the emphasis rule governs how the two prices may be shown. This is general information, not legal advice (September 17, 2026).

What the rest of Canada allows, and why it does not reach Quebec

Outside Quebec the picture is different enough to be worth stating, because a head office in another province often designs one national program. FCAC says a merchant has the option of adding a surcharge to a credit card transaction except in Quebec, and describes a maximum surcharge cap of 2.4%. It says surcharges and fees must be clearly disclosed to cardholders before a transaction is completed, and that cardholders must be able to cancel the transaction without penalty before authorizing payment. On debit, FCAC tells merchants to contact their payment processor about their ability to surcharge, noting that some networks do not allow it. None of that creates room in Quebec: the 2.4% cap is a ceiling on a practice that Quebec's advertised-price rule does not permit in the first place, and a disclosure that satisfies a network rule does not satisfy section 224.

Customer data and confidentiality incidents

If you keep customer information such as contact details, purchase history or card tokens, Quebec's privacy rules apply. The Commission d'accès à l'information du Québec (CAI) says enterprises must keep a register of confidentiality incidents involving personal information, keep those records for at least five years from the date the incident is discovered, and notify the CAI and the people affected when an incident presents a risk of serious prejudice. The CAI sets out what each register entry has to contain: a description of the personal information concerned, or the reason it cannot be described; a brief description of the circumstances; the date or period of the incident and the date the enterprise became aware of it; the number of people affected, or an approximation; the elements of the analysis that led to the finding on risk of serious prejudice, which the CAI frames around the sensitivity of the information, the possible malicious uses and the probability of the consequences; the dates of notification to the CAI and to the people affected, where notification was required; and a brief description of the measures taken to reduce the risk of harm. Notice to the CAI is given promptly and in writing on its form. Notice to affected people is given without delay, subject to narrow exceptions the CAI describes, such as where notice would cause greater harm, where it would present excessive difficulty, or where contact information is unavailable. The person in charge of the protection of personal information must be consulted in assessing the gravity of an incident. A card tokenisation vault or a POS customer database is squarely within this, so decide now who holds that role and where the register lives, rather than on the day something goes wrong.

Selling into Quebec from another province

A business based in Ontario or elsewhere that sells to customers in Quebec, including online, should not assume a surcharge program built for the rest of Canada works for those customers. Take advice before applying any card fee to Quebec sales.