From 1 October 2026, Australian businesses can no longer surcharge eftpos, Mastercard or Visa (debit, prepaid or credit); American Express, Diners Club and PayPal are excluded and can still be surcharged at cost.
The RBA estimates the ban removes about $1.6 billion of the $1.8 billion consumers pay in card surcharges each year, and lower interchange caps cut merchants' wholesale card costs by around $910 million a year.
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Domestic consumer-credit interchange falls from 0.8% to 0.3% and debit to 8c + 0.16%; a foreign-card cap of 1.0% and new fee-transparency rules follow on 1 April 2027.
If you currently surcharge, from 1 October you must absorb the fee (~1-1.5% of card revenue) or build it into your prices — the RBA expects about 16% of surcharging merchants to raise prices.
Lower fees are not automatic: flat-rate plans may not pass the interchange cut through, so review your plan, ask about least-cost routing for debit, and shop around.
Don't rebadge a surcharge as an "admin" or "service" fee — the ACCC treats that as misleading conduct.
From 1 October 2026, Australian businesses can no longer add a surcharge to eftpos, Mastercard or Visa payments — debit, prepaid or credit. It's the biggest change to how small businesses handle card payments in two decades, and the Reserve Bank has confirmed it's happening, not just proposed. For customers it's a clear win: the RBA estimates the ban removes about $1.6 billion of the $1.8 billion Australians pay in card surcharges each year. For business owners the picture is more nuanced — if you currently surcharge, you'll absorb the fee or build it into your prices, and the promised savings from lower card fees aren't automatic.
This is the complete guide: the history, exactly what changes and when, what you actually pay to accept a card, original modelling of what the ban costs a real business, and a checklist to be ready by 1 October. Figures throughout are from the RBA's March 2026 .
1 October 2026: you can't surcharge eftpos, Mastercard or Visa (debit, prepaid or credit). Domestic interchange caps also fall.
1 April 2027: a new cap on foreign-card fees, plus transparency rules that make it easier to shop around.
Still allowed: surcharging American Express, Diners Club and PayPal, capped at your actual cost. BNPL sits under separate rules.
The catch: if you surcharge today, you'll absorb ~1–1.5% of card revenue or reprice. Lower fees from the interchange cuts only reach you if your provider passes them on.
Don't rename a surcharge an "admin fee" — the ACCC treats that as misleading conduct.
Surcharging isn't new. The RBA first allowed merchants to pass on card costs in 2003, and refined the rules in 2013 and 2016 so a surcharge couldn't exceed a business's actual cost of acceptance. The idea was a price signal: if credit cost more, customers would feel it and choose a cheaper method.
By 2026 that logic had broken down, for reasons the RBA lays out plainly:
Almost everyone surcharges the same way. About 16% of merchants surcharged in 2024/25, and only around 5% differentiate between debit and credit — the rest apply one blended rate to every card. When a low-cost debit tap is surcharged at the same rate as a premium credit card, the price signal disappears.
Cash stopped being the free alternative. Cash fell from 69% of in-person transactions in 2007 to around 15% in 2025. When you can't realistically pay another way, a surcharge is just a tax on the only option you have.
Disclosure is poor. Consumers reported being told about a surcharge "only sometimes or rarely," so there's no informed choice at the terminal.
It's hard to police. The ACCC struggles to check every merchant's true cost of acceptance across hundreds of thousands of businesses.
Public sentiment matched the analysis: in the RBA's survey, 76% thought surcharging should stop, and 20% of consumers said they'd actively avoided a surcharge by switching payment method. So the RBA scrapped the framework rather than patch it again.
1. The surcharge ban. You can no longer surcharge eftpos, Mastercard or Visa — debit, prepaid and credit. Terminals and online checkouts have to stop adding the fee on these networks.
2. Lower domestic interchange caps. Interchange is the wholesale fee, set by the card networks, that flows to the card-issuing bank inside every transaction. It's the biggest single component of what you pay. The RBA is cutting the caps on domestic-issued cards acquired in Australia:
Card type
Interchange cap from 1 Oct 2026
Consumer credit (Visa/Mastercard)
0.30% (down from 0.80%)
Commercial/business credit
0.80% (unchanged)
Debit & prepaid
8c per transaction and 0.16% of value (reduced)
The RBA says small businesses benefit most, because they tend to pay fees closest to the caps — big retailers already negotiate below them. Overall it estimates the interchange cuts lower merchants' wholesale card costs by around $910 million a year (and reduce card issuers' revenue by roughly $660 million).
A cap on foreign-card interchange of 1.0% on overseas-issued cards acquired in Australia — previously unregulated and often as high as ~2%. Good news if you sell to tourists or online buyers abroad.
Transparency reforms designed to help you shop around:
Acquirers processing over $10 billion a year must publish their merchant fees quarterly, broken down by business size and card type.
Card networks must publish aggregate interchange and scheme fees quarterly.
Merchant statements must break costs down by domestic vs foreign cards and card-present vs online.
Transparency is the quietest reform but arguably the most useful long-term: today it's genuinely hard to compare providers, which is how uncompetitive pricing survives.
The ban only covers the designated networks. You can still surcharge, capped at your real cost of acceptance:
American Express and Diners Club
PayPal
Buy-now-pay-later (Afterpay, Zip) sits under separate rules.
So if Amex costs you more, you can keep passing that on — you just can't surcharge eftpos, Mastercard or Visa.
The one move to avoid: renaming your surcharge an "admin fee" or "service fee" to sidestep the ban. The ACCC has flagged that as misleading or deceptive conduct and says it will act on it. If you want to recover the cost, put it in your prices — don't disguise it.
To make good decisions you need to know what a "card fee" is actually made of. Your merchant service fee has three parts:
Interchange — paid to the customer's bank (the issuer). The biggest slice, and the part the RBA is capping.
Scheme fees — paid to Visa/Mastercard/eftpos for running the network.
Acquirer margin — what your payment provider (Square, Stripe, Tyro, your bank) keeps.
Two pricing models matter here:
Interchange-plus passes through interchange and scheme fees at cost, plus a fixed margin. If interchange falls, your cost falls — you'll see the RBA's cuts.
Flat-rate / blended (a simple "1.6% on everything") bundles all three into one rate. When interchange drops, the provider's margin quietly widens unless they choose to lower your rate. This is the crux: on a flat plan, the interchange cut may not reach you at all.
That single distinction decides whether you're a winner or a bystander in these reforms — which is exactly why the RBA added the transparency rules.
Here's the honest part. If you currently surcharge Visa, Mastercard or eftpos, from 1 October that fee comes out of your margin unless you reprice. If you already absorb card fees, nothing gets worse — and you may save a little as interchange caps fall.
We modelled four typical Australian businesses using a 1.5% blended card cost (a realistic small-business rate) and the card surcharge calculator:
Business
Card sales / month
Card cost now (~1.5%)
Cost per year
If you surcharged, now absorbed/yr
Potential fee saving/yr*
Café / small venue
$40,000
~$600
~$7,200
~$7,200
up to ~$1,440
Hair / beauty salon
$25,000
~$375
~$4,500
~$4,500
up to ~$900
Tradie (cards + invoices)
$15,000
~$225
~$2,700
~$2,700
up to ~$540
Cleaning business
$12,000
~$180
~$2,160
~$2,160
up to ~$432
*Illustrative only. Assumes a 1.5% blended cost of acceptance and up to a 0.3 percentage-point reduction if your provider passes on the lower interchange caps (see the pricing-model point above — many flat-rate plans won't automatically). Your real numbers depend on your plan, card mix and volume; model yours with the calculator.
Two things stand out. First, the amount you can no longer surcharge is real money — a café absorbing about $7,200 a year is a genuine hit to margin. Second, the "savings" are conditional: the interchange cut only reaches you if your provider passes it through, which is why reviewing your plan matters as much as the ban itself.
Absorb the fee. Simplest, keeps your prices clean — but roughly 1–1.5% of card revenue now comes out of your margin. Fine for high-margin services; painful for thin-margin, high-volume businesses like cafés.
Build it into your prices. Lift prices by about your card cost (often ~1%) so the fee is covered without a separate line. The RBA expects about 16% of merchants that currently surcharge to raise their advertised prices — so a modest, across-the-board rise won't make you an outlier.
Whichever you choose, know your real cost of acceptance first: pull your last merchant statement and check the effective percentage you actually pay. That single number drives every decision here.
There's a way to cut your debit costs that has nothing to do with the ban — and most small businesses have never switched it on. When a customer taps a dual-network debit card, the transaction can be routed either through Visa/Mastercard or through eftpos, which is usually cheaper. Least-cost routing (LCR) sends it down the cheaper rail automatically.
The RBA hasn't mandated dynamic LCR, so it's on you to ask your provider to enable it. With debit now the majority of card transactions, turning on LCR can meaningfully lower your average cost of acceptance — a saving you keep whether or not you ever surcharged. Ask your provider: "Is least-cost routing enabled on my terminal?"
Australia is following a path the UK and European Union took in 2018, when both banned consumer card surcharges (the EU under PSD2; the UK's ban explicitly included PayPal). Amex and Diners consumer surcharges often remained permitted there too — the same carve-out Australia is using.
The honest lesson from those markets, and from Australian payments researchers: costs don't vanish, they move. When surcharging stops, some businesses quietly lift prices, so consumers pay less at the terminal but a little more on the shelf. The reforms make pricing simpler and more certain — no nasty surprise at checkout — and, paired with lower interchange, cheaper overall. But "no surcharge" doesn't automatically mean "cheaper for everyone." Going in clear-eyed about that is the point of this guide.
Find your real cost of acceptance. Your merchant statement shows the effective rate — that's the number that matters. (The calculator turns a sale plus your rate into the exact figure.)
Turn off surcharging on eftpos/Mastercard/Visa in your terminal and online checkout before 1 October. Some terminals need a manual update — book it with your provider now.
Decide: absorb or reprice — and if you reprice, do it cleanly across your prices, not as a renamed fee.
Ask about least-cost routing for debit, and whether your provider will pass on the lower interchange caps — or move to interchange-plus and shop around while the new transparency rules make comparison easier.
Keep surcharging Amex and PayPal if their cost justifies it — that's still allowed.
Update your bookkeeping so card fees land in the right expense account now that they're a cost you carry, not a pass-through.
If you take payments and send invoices in one place, this gets simpler — OneBookPlus records the fee against each payment automatically, so your books stay right whether you absorb or reprice.
When does the card surcharge ban start in Australia?
1 October 2026. From that date you can't surcharge eftpos, Mastercard or Visa (debit, prepaid or credit). A separate cap on foreign-card fees and transparency reforms follow on 1 April 2027.
Which cards can I still surcharge?
American Express, Diners Club and PayPal, provided the surcharge doesn't exceed your actual cost of accepting them. eftpos, Mastercard and Visa can't be surcharged at all.
Will my card fees actually go down?
The RBA is cutting interchange caps (domestic consumer credit from 0.8% to 0.3%; debit to 8c + 0.16%), which it estimates saves merchants around $910 million a year. But the saving only reaches you if your provider passes it on — flat-rate plans may not, so review your plan, ask about least-cost routing, and shop around.
Can I add an "admin fee" instead of a surcharge?
No. The ACCC has said renaming a card surcharge as an "admin" or "service" fee to get around the ban is misleading conduct, and it will act on it.
Should I absorb the fee or raise my prices?
Either is fine. Absorbing keeps prices simple but costs you about 1–1.5% of card revenue; repricing covers it but needs a clean, across-the-board adjustment. The RBA expects about 16% of surcharging merchants to lift advertised prices.
Does the ban apply to online payments too?
Yes. It applies to eftpos, Mastercard and Visa however they're accepted — in person, online or over the phone. Note that card-not-present (online) acceptance usually costs more, so check your online rate specifically.
What is least-cost routing and should I turn it on?
Least-cost routing sends dual-network debit taps down the cheaper network (usually eftpos). It can lower your average debit cost regardless of surcharging, but you generally have to ask your provider to enable it.
The cost modelling is illustrative: it assumes a 1.5% blended cost of acceptance (a typical small-business rate) applied to stated monthly card turnover, with a potential saving of up to 0.3 percentage points where a provider passes on the lower interchange caps. It is a planning aid, not advice — your actual costs depend on your provider, plan, card mix and volume. Model your own numbers with the card surcharge calculator.
The surcharge ban is a genuine win for customers and, over time, for the businesses that pass on lower fees. But it isn't free money for merchants: from 1 October 2026, if you surcharge the big three networks you'll absorb that cost or reprice, and the interchange savings only land if you shop around and switch on least-cost routing. Know your real cost of acceptance, decide absorb-or-reprice before October, and hold your provider to the lower caps. Start by modelling your number.
