There is no official cash discount signage template, from any card network or any agency, so anyone selling you one is selling you their own wording. What follows is wording you can copy, and more importantly, the job each sign has to do.
What the signs have to accomplish
One thing: nobody reaches the register uninformed. If a customer can honestly say they did not know there were two prices until the card was in their hand, your signage failed, however many notices are on the wall.
That gives you three moments to cover. The moment they walk in, the moment they choose an item, and the moment they pay. Miss the middle one and shoppers feel ambushed at the shelf. Miss the last one and they feel it at the counter.
Everything below is written to cover those three moments in plain language a tired person can read in two seconds.
A cash discount signage template for each spot
Copy these and change the words to sound like your store. Keep them short. Long notices do not get read.
On the door or entrance:
This store has two prices. Pay with cash and you pay the cash price. Pay with a card and you pay the card price. Both prices are on every shelf tag.
At the register, facing the customer:
Cash price and card price are both shown on the screen. Choose how you pay and the price follows.
On the shelf tag:
Cash $X.XX / Card $X.XX
Two rules on the tag and they are not negotiable. Same type size for both prices, and the same order on every tag in the store. A shopper who has to hunt for which number applies to them will assume you meant them to.
Where each sign goes and how many you need
Fewer than you think, in better places than you are probably using.
One at the entrance, at adult eye level, on the inside of the glass where it does not get bleached out. One at every register, facing the customer, not facing the cashier. Then the shelf tags, which do the actual work.
Resist the urge to paper the store. A dozen notices reads as defensiveness, and it makes each one invisible. Three well-placed signs and correct shelf tags beat twenty flyers taped to the cooler doors.
Wording that causes complaints
Some phrases reliably generate arguments at the counter. Avoid all of them.
Anything that sounds like a tax or a government charge. Anything with the word “fee” in it, because a fee reads as an addition, and a two-price policy is not an addition. “Non-cash adjustment” and similar industry phrasings, which say nothing to a shopper and sound like something being hidden. Percentages on a sign, which invite a customer to do arithmetic on your margin at the counter with a queue behind them.
Also avoid apologizing in the copy. “Unfortunately, due to rising costs” invites a debate about your costs. State the policy, keep it neutral, move on.
What the receipt has to show
The signs are only two thirds of the job. The receipt is where a customer checks whether they were told the truth.
The customer copy should show the price actually charged for each item, matching the shelf tag for that tender. If your setup instead prints a base price and then a separate line adding an amount, you are not running a discount at all, you are surcharging, and a different set of card network conditions applies to you. That distinction is laid out on our cash discount and dual pricing page, and it is worth being certain which one you are on before printing a single sign.
Two tenders need testing before you go live. SNAP has to ring at the cash price, since federal program rules bar a SNAP shopper from paying more than anyone else, and our EBT and SNAP page covers wiring the tender correctly. Returns need to refund the price actually paid, which means the register has to remember the original tender.
Printing and upkeep
Print on a laser printer or have them printed properly. A sign printed at home on inkjet and taped up crooked signals that the policy is improvised, and customers respond to it that way.
Then keep the tags honest. The most common failure is not a missing sign, it is a shelf tag that never got reprinted after a price change, so the tag and the screen disagree. That is the argument you will actually have. A register that prints both prices onto the tag from the same item record removes the problem entirely, which is one of the things worth checking when you look at a convenience store system.
If you want us to look at your current signs and tell you what a customer would notice first, send us photos. It is a quick job, and a second pair of eyes catches what you stopped seeing months ago.
Frequently asked questions
Do I have to show both prices on every item? On every item you are two-pricing. Partial application is where confusion starts, because shoppers learn one rule and then hit an exception at the register.
Can I put the policy on a receipt footer instead? No. A footer is read after the sale. It can support the signs, but it cannot replace the notice at the door and the price on the tag.
Should the sign name the card brands? It does not need to. Cash price and card price cover it, and naming brands makes the sign longer without helping anyone.
How big should the entrance sign be? Big enough to read from a step or two away without stopping. If someone has to lean in, it is too small.