Discounts (negative amounts)

Setting one up

Type a minus sign. −2 in the percentage field gives 2 % off the calculation base; −1.50 in the fixed field takes 1.50 off every order paid this way. Both together is fine. The percentage base, the tax settings, the label and the free-shipping rules all work exactly as they do for a positive fee.

Give it a title that says so: “Bank transfer discount” reads better on an invoice than “Bank transfer fee −2.20”.

Negative caps

The minimum and maximum are bounds, not magnitudes. They clamp the result, and the result of a discount is a negative number, so the bounds that limit a discount are negative too:

A minimum of +1 on a −2 % rule does not mean “at least 1 off” — it means the fee may not fall below 1, so the discount turns into a 1.00 charge. The caps section of the calculation page has the arithmetic.

On the order

A negative fee line, shown as such in the totals, on the email and on the invoice.

A negative fee always reduces the tax line, whether or not you mark it taxable: WooCommerce treats it as a tax-inclusive discount and spreads it across the tax classes already in the basket. What the tax settings still decide is whether the −2.20 you typed is the gross discount or the amount before tax.

WooCommerce reports count it as a fee, not as a coupon, so coupon reports are unaffected.

The PayPal case

PayPal’s user agreement prohibits surcharging PayPal payments in most markets, so there is no PayPal-specific support here and no advice to set a fee on it. Nothing in the plugin blocks you either — a fee set on PayPal charges like any other method, so it is your merchant agreement at stake, not a technical limit.

The approach their terms do allow is the opposite one: put a discount on the methods you would rather customers used — bank transfer, a card gateway with lower fees — and leave PayPal at its list price. The customer sees the cheaper option and picks it; nobody is surcharged.

With conditions

A discount for some customers only is a condition on the rule: user role matches Wholesale → −2 %. Nothing more is needed — a rule that does not match charges nothing, so everybody else pays list price. That is Pro; the wholesale recipe walks through it.