## Overview

A charge involves more decisions than just the amount. **Payment terms** gathers everything that
changes what the customer pays and what your business receives:

- **Late fee** — charged once, when a charge passes its due date unpaid.
- **Monthly interest** — accrues while the charge stays overdue.
- **Early-payment discount** — a reduction if the customer pays before a given date.
- **Installments and who pays the interest** — the business absorbs the cost, or the customer pays it.

And the **simulation** answers, before you charge anyone, the two questions that matter: *how much
does the customer pay per month?* and *how much do you receive?*

## Prerequisites

- An active gateway connection under **Payments → Settings**.
- Terms depend on the gateway. Asaas accepts late fee, interest and early-payment discount; Mercado
  Pago exposes none of them, so those fields do not appear on a Mercado Pago connection.
- Installments exist only on **one-off charges** paid by credit card. Subscriptions bill one amount
  per cycle — neither gateway splits a recurrence into installments.

## Step by step

### Set the account default

1. Go to **Payments → Settings → Connections** and edit the connection.
2. Under **Installment interest**, choose who pays:
   - **The business absorbs it** — the customer pays the charge amount split into installments, and
     the gateway fee comes out of your net. This is the default.
   - **The customer pays it** — interest is added to each installment so you receive the full amount.
3. Choosing *The customer pays it*, set the **monthly rate**. Left blank, we use the gateway's own
   fee schedule — and the hint under the field shows what that comes to per month for the selected
   plan, before you decide to override it.
4. Save. Every new charge starts with that choice — and each charge can override it.

### Apply terms to a charge

1. Open **New charge** and pick the payment method.
2. In the **Gateway options** block, fill in the late fee, interest and early-payment discount.
3. On the fee and the discount, choose between **Percentage** and **Fixed amount**. The field label
   follows: `Late fee (%)` or `Late fee (Fixed amount)`.
4. For a credit card, choose the number of installments. The **Simulation** block appears below.

### Read the simulation

The block shows two columns:

- **The customer pays** — for example `12x of R$ 83.08 (last one R$ 83.12)` plus the total. The last
  installment carries the remainder; that is how the gateway divides the amount.
- **You receive** — the net after the gateway fee, with the fee broken out underneath.

When the gateway confirms the simulation, a **Confirmed by the gateway** badge appears.

## Settings & options

| Term | Asaas | Mercado Pago |
|---|---|---|
| Late fee (% or fixed) | Yes | No |
| Monthly interest | Yes | No |
| Early-payment discount | Yes | No |
| All three on a subscription | Yes | No |
| Choosing who pays the installment interest | Yes | No — the business always absorbs it |
| Maximum installments | 21 | 36 |
| Showing the net before payment | Yes | No |

Leaving a field **blank** is not the same as entering zero: blank inherits the default configured in
the gateway's own panel; zero overrides that default to no fee at all.

## Use cases

- **Recurring service with frequent late payments**: a 2% fee + 1% monthly interest on the
  subscription. Every charge the recurrence generates inherits the policy.
- **High-ticket product**: 12x with *the customer pays* the interest, so you receive the full amount.
- **Incentive to pay early**: a 5% discount up to 3 days before the due date.
- **A fee in money**: R$ 10.00 flat instead of a percentage, across charges of very different sizes.

## Tips, limits & best practices

- A **fixed** fee or discount can never exceed the charge itself.
- A percentage never goes above 100.
- If you choose *The customer pays it* with no monthly rate and no gateway fee schedule available,
  the charge is refused with a message asking for the rate — rather than silently billing your
  business instead.
- Editing a pending charge sends the terms to the gateway too. Clearing every field removes the
  policy from the charge.
- The simulation is an estimate until the confirmation badge appears. When the gateway does not
  report the net (Mercado Pago), the screen says so — we never show an estimated number there.

## Troubleshooting

**"The simulation could not be calculated right now."**
A momentary gateway hiccup. Use *Try again*; the charge can still be created.

**"This gateway does not report the net amount before payment."**
Expected on Mercado Pago. What the customer pays is still correct; the net is only known after
settlement.

**"We could not read this account's fee schedule from the gateway right now."**
Reading the schedule failed — a rejected credential, an outage, or an unexpected response from the
gateway. Use **Read the fees again** right there: nothing is stored when a read fails, so the button
really does query the gateway. Saving the connection again also forces a fresh read.

**The fee and interest options do not appear.**
The connection is Mercado Pago, which does not offer those fields.

**The installments field does not appear.**
Installments exist only on credit-card, one-off charges.

## See also

- [Discounts and amount adjustments](/hc/ajuda/articles/payments-descontos-en)
- [Create a charge and send it in the conversation](/hc/ajuda/articles/payments-criar-cobranca-enviar-na-conversa-en)
- [Subscriptions and plans](/hc/ajuda/articles/payments-assinaturas-planos-en)
- [Connect a gateway](/hc/ajuda/articles/payments-conectar-gateway-en)