How We Got a Baton Rouge Restaurant Fully SB254 Compliant in One Visit
A family-owned restaurant off Government Street in Baton Rouge came to us with a problem most owners do not even know they have: they were already running a "cash discount" program, but it was set up in a way that put them on the wrong side of both the Visa rules and Louisiana's SB254.
They were saving money. They were also one chargeback complaint away from a compliance headache.
The situation
Their previous provider had flipped on a flat surcharge at the register. Every card sale, debit included, got hit with the same percentage. The signage by the door said "3% cash discount," but the system was actually adding a fee on top of the menu price, and it was charging that fee on debit cards too.
That is the exact pattern that gets flagged. Under the card brand rules you cannot surcharge debit cards at all, and under Louisiana SB254 the way you disclose and apply the difference has to follow specific rules. What they had looked like savings and walked like a surcharge.
What we did
We do not improvise compliance. We ran them through the same checklist behind our $5,000 compliance guarantee:
- Reconfigured the program as a true cash discount. The card price becomes the listed price, and a discount is applied for cash. That is the model the rules are built around, not a fee bolted onto the receipt.
- Carved debit out entirely. Their Clover Station Duo now recognizes a debit card and never applies the discount differential to it. This is the single most common violation we fix, and it is invisible to the owner until someone complains.
- Fixed the disclosure. Correct signage at the door and at the point of sale, plus the line-item language on the printed and emailed receipt.
- Set the processor account up on our side. The backend pricing and compliance configuration is done on the ZeroPoint processor account. That part is not a setting an owner can toggle, and it is the piece that actually holds up if anyone asks questions.
The result
The whole reconfiguration happened in one on-site visit. No new hardware, no downtime during service, no reprinting the menu. The owner kept the savings they were already seeing and lost the exposure they did not know they had.
The part that mattered most to them was not the money. It was being able to say, in writing, that their program was set up correctly and backed by our guarantee.
The takeaway
"Cash discount" and "surcharge" get used like they mean the same thing. They do not, and the difference is exactly where compliance lives. If you are already running a discount program, the question is not whether you are saving money. It is whether it would survive a second look.
If you are not sure which one you are running, we will check it for free.
Representative scenario based on situations we routinely resolve for merchants across South Louisiana and the Gulf Coast.