From 1 October 2026 the card networks are stopping surcharges on eftpos, Mastercard, Visa and American Express. If you do not surcharge, nothing changes at your counter. If you do, it has to come off, and there is more to that than flicking one switch.
The short version
Making sure the surcharge is gone is your job, not your provider’s. Some providers have said they will disable it. Some have not. Either way it is your business that has to be compliant, so ask each of yours what they will change and what they expect you to do, and keep the answer.
The fee saving is not automatic. Interchange caps come down the same day, but interchange is only one part of what you pay, and nothing obliges anyone to pass the difference on.
So the job worth your time is not the surcharge. It is knowing what you actually pay per dollar of card sales, and asking your provider what changed. We have written that up separately: what it actually costs you to take a card.
Does this even affect you?
If you surcharge now
It has to come off every terminal, your online checkout, payment links, QR codes and any recurring payments. It also has to come out of your quotes, invoices, signage, website and terms. Then you decide whether to absorb the cost or price for it.
If you do not
Nothing changes at the counter, which covers most businesses. The RBA puts it at 16 per cent of Australian businesses that surcharge. Skip to the fees section, because that is the part with money in it for you.
If you are not sure
Check a recent receipt. If a customer paying by card is charged more than the ticket price, you surcharge. Worth checking rather than assuming, because on some setups it has been on for years.
What is covered, and what is not
| Payment type | From 1 October 2026 |
|---|---|
| eftpos, Mastercard, Visa. Debit, prepaid and credit | No surcharge, under the card networks’ own rules |
| American Express | Sits outside the RBA’s rules, but Amex is introducing the same no surcharge rule from the same date |
| Apple Pay, Google Pay and other wallets | Generally follow whichever card sits behind them, so a wallet tap on a Visa card is a Visa transaction |
| Diners Club, PayPal, BPAY | Not part of this reform. That is not the same as saying you may surcharge them, because your own provider agreement still applies, and a PayPal payment can be funded by a card |
| Buy now pay later | Not part of this reform, and many providers already forbid surcharging in their own terms |
| Weekend, public holiday and booking fees | Untouched. The change only reaches a fee added because somebody paid by card |
| Cash | No card, so none of this applies. You can offer a discount for it |
Check your own arrangements before relying on any row of that. Provider rules can be stricter than the minimum, some networks may allow narrow exceptions, and separate state rules still apply in a few sectors such as taxis. Ask each of your providers in writing which of these rows applies to you, and keep the answer.
Work already quoted, invoiced or on terms
This is where trade businesses get caught, because the money often arrives weeks after the job.
It generally follows the payment date, not the invoice date. A surcharge on a card payment made on or after 1 October may no longer be available to you, even if the invoice went out in September. The networks may allow narrow exceptions, so confirm how your own provider is handling the changeover rather than assuming either way.
Three practical consequences:
- Unpaid invoices and live payment links that add a card fee at payment need looking at. Depending on how yours are set up that might mean amending the link, reissuing the invoice, or nothing at all if the fee was only ever a note about a payment option. Ask your provider which applies to you.
- Quotes and contracts already accepted with a surcharge clause in them need looking at. You cannot simply put an agreed price up because you can no longer recover the fee separately.
- Recurring payment authorities set up with a surcharge need changing at the source, not just at the terminal.
The part with actual money in it
On the same day, the caps on interchange fees come down. Domestic consumer credit drops from a cap of 0.8% to 0.3%. Domestic debit moves from 10 cents, or 0.2%, to 8 cents, or 0.16%. Commercial credit cards stay where they are, capped at 0.8%. Cards issued overseas get a 1.0% cap from 1 April 2027.
Read those as caps on one component, not your new rate. Interchange sits alongside the scheme fees and your provider’s own margin. Some rates were already below the new caps, so not every business has a saving waiting for it. If you are on a single blended rate, any reduction is your provider’s to pass on or keep.
- Work out what you actually pay. Take everything your provider charged you for a full month, including terminal rental and any gateway fee, and divide it by your card sales for that month. That percentage is your real cost, and it is usually higher than the rate you think you are on.
- Do the same sum on a full statement period after the change. Compare like with like. Your effective rate moves around on its own with your card mix, how many overseas cards you take and your online versus in person split, so a number that has not moved is not proof of anything by itself. It is a prompt to ask, not a verdict.
- Ask them directly, in writing. What interchange you are being charged now, what it was before 1 October, and how the reduction has been applied to your plan. A provider who will not answer that in writing has told you something.
- Get a competing quote on your real numbers. Give any other provider your monthly turnover, average transaction size, the in person and online split, your card mix including overseas cards, refunds and chargebacks, terminal rental and contract term. A quote built on different assumptions is not a comparison.
Worth doing the sum. On $600,000 of card sales a year, two tenths of one per cent is $1,200. Whether any of that is available to you depends on your plan and what you were paying before, which is exactly why the number is worth asking for rather than assuming.
There is more to this than the surcharge, and it keeps mattering long after October. Working out your real card rate, and what to ask your provider goes through it properly.
Four things people have wrong
“The government banned surcharging”
Not exactly. The RBA removed its own rule that stopped the card networks banning surcharges, and the networks then banned them. So what binds you is a clause in your merchant agreement, and it is your provider and the card network that enforce it rather than a regulator. Legislation is the government’s stated fallback if surcharging carries on anyway.
“Amex is exempt, so I can still surcharge that”
Amex is outside the RBA’s rules, which is where the idea comes from. But Amex is bringing in its own no surcharge rule from the same date, so in practice it goes too.
“My merchant fees are going away”
They are not. One component of them is capped lower. Scheme fees and your provider’s margin are untouched, and neither is obliged to fall.
“A cash discount is a way around it”
It is not a way around anything, because discounts were never banned. The RBA and the ACCC both say you can offer a discount for paying a particular way. Whether it is worth doing is a separate question, and often the answer is no.
The cash discount, and the sum that decides it
One compliant way to structure it is this. The price on the ticket is the price a card customer pays. When somebody pays cash, the operator applies a discount at the terminal. The ACCC’s requirement is that the price you display has to be the full price somebody pays if they do not get the discount, so the displayed price has to be the undiscounted one.
Turn it around and it becomes a surcharge with a different name on it. Advertise $100 and charge $105 on card and you have a problem. The ACCC has said it plainly: a business cannot escape the rules by calling a surcharge something else.
You also have to tell people. The ACCC expects payment method discounts to be clearly disclosed before a customer chooses to book, order or pay. A discount nobody knew about until the terminal is not doing the job anyway.
The break even, and the trap in it. Compare the discount against the card cost you actually avoid on that sale, which is the per transaction percentage and any per transaction cent charge. It is not your all in effective rate. Your terminal rental and gateway fee are still payable whether that customer taps a card or hands you a note, so they are not saved and they do not belong in the sum.
Say the card costs you 1.2% per transaction. A 1% discount is inside that and leaves you a little ahead before cash handling. A 2% discount costs you 0.8% more than the card did, which you might well decide is worth it to shift the payment mix. A 5% discount gives away 3.8% to save 1.2%, which is a much harder case to make. Because handling cash costs you something too, the true break even sits below your card rate rather than at it.
The rate is your call. Set it against a number you have worked out rather than a figure that sounds about right.
And cash is not free. Somebody counts it, somebody reconciles it, somebody banks it, and you carry the counting errors, the security and the theft risk. Put a real number on that before you set a discount rate.
There are good reasons to run one even when it costs a little more than the card did. Faster money in the account, fewer chargebacks, and a customer who feels like they got something. In the RBA’s consumer survey more than half of card users said they would switch to cash for a 1% discount on a $50 purchase, so it does not take much to move behaviour. Bear in mind that is what people said in a survey rather than what they were seen doing in a shop.
If you run one, write the terms down: what the discount is, what it applies to, how it appears on the receipt, and how it is recorded in your books. A discount reduces what you were paid, so your records and your GST need to show the amount actually received.
Where people will get themselves in trouble
Renaming the surcharge. A card fee called an administration fee, a processing fee or a payment handling fee is still a card fee. The ACCC has said businesses doing this may be engaging in misleading conduct.
Blaming the government for a price rise. You are free to put prices up. You are not free to tell customers the whole increase was forced on you if it was not. Misleading people about the reason for a price rise is its own problem, separate from the price itself.
Leaving one channel switched on. The terminal is the obvious one. The website checkout, the payment link on your invoice template and the recurring payment set up two years ago are the ones that get missed.
Leaving the words behind. Signage, quote templates, terms and conditions, the email that goes out with every invoice. If they still mention a card fee you are advertising something you cannot charge.
What to do before 1 October
- Ask every provider, in writing, what they are turning off. Terminals, gateway, online checkout, invoicing software, payment links, QR codes, recurring payments. Ask specifically what they will do and what they expect you to do. Keep the reply.
- List every place a card fee is mentioned. Not just settings. Quotes, invoice templates, signage, website, terms and conditions, the standard email.
- Test each channel on the day. Run a small transaction through every way you take money and check what the customer is charged. This is the step that catches the channel nobody remembered.
- Deal with the unpaid ones. Invoices and payment links already out with a card fee on them, and any accepted quote with a surcharge clause.
- Decide on pricing once, deliberately. Absorb it or price for it. Decide now rather than finding it in your margin in December.
- Work out your real card cost, then ask what changed. Total charges divided by card sales for a full month. Write it down, redo it after the change, and ask your provider what moved.
- Only then look at discounts. And only if the break even sum above says it pays.
Not sure what you actually pay to take a card?
Bring us a merchant statement. We will work out your real rate, help you ask your provider the right question, and tell you plainly whether a cash discount is worth the trouble in your business.
General information only, current at 11 September 2026, and not advice about your business. These rules are capable of changing and your own provider’s terms may differ, so check the current guidance from the Reserve Bank and the ACCC, and confirm your own arrangements with your payment provider. Business Edge Advisors, Level 1, 561 Olive Street, Albury NSW 2640. Registered tax agent 20651000.
