Digital Payments Program: Cost recovery and credit card fees

Starting November 1, 2023, a cost recovery fee will be implemented for TouchNet, UBC’s new digital payment solution.

The Digital Payments Program (DPP) was established with the premise that the costs associated with implementing and maintaining the Program would be recovered through a nominal 30 basis points ($0.003) fee per dollar transacted through TouchNet.

UBC merchants using TouchNet will see this fee charged against their Ledger Account 6390, with the Spend Category as Administrative Overhead (SC0059).

Financial institutions charge credit card fees anytime a purchase is made. Global Payments, our commerce platform, charges these fees for processing payments made using TouchNet. This flow-through cost is traditionally allocated back to UBC merchants as part of the cost of doing business.

Card fee allocation was completed for December and January 2023, but was paused in February 2023 when the DPP team identified an error in the transaction fee source report. This error has been resolved, and the transaction fee allocation was restarted on October 16, 2023, and will be applied retroactively to all transactions since the pause began.

For questions or concerns regarding this recovery fee, please contact digital.payments@ubc.ca.