The surcharge is ending.
The cost isn’t.
From 1 October 2026, Australian businesses can no longer pass card fees on to their customers. Our new white paper explains what changes, who it really affects, and how to come out ahead.
On 1 October 2026, two changes to Australian card payments land on the same day, and they pull in opposite directions.
The first is the one everyone is talking about. Surcharging on eftpos, Mastercard and Visa is removed, across debit, prepaid and credit, and American Express has decided to follow from the same date. A cost you could pass on to your customers becomes a cost you carry.
The second is quieter. On the same day, the wholesale interchange fees businesses pay to accept those cards come down, with small businesses benefiting most. One reform makes the cost yours. The other makes it smaller.
Source: RBA, Review of Merchant Card Payment Costs and Surcharging, Conclusions Paper, March 2026. Last updated 6 October 2026.
Most businesses come out fine
Only around 16% of businesses surcharged in 2024/25. For everyone else, this is a quiet win: lower card costs, with nothing to change. The businesses that feel it are the minority who relied on the surcharge to protect their margin.
The number that matters is 2.3
Small businesses on single-rate plans pay around 1.4% to accept cards, against 0.6% for large businesses, about 2.3 times as much. Same job, more than twice the price.
While you could pass that cost on, the gap was easy to ignore. From 1 October, every basis point of it is your margin. A business paying 1.4% that gets to 0.8% wins back more than 40% of what the ban costs it.
The winners will be the businesses that use the deadline to fix their cost of acceptance, not only the ones that switch the surcharge off.
What’s inside
The End of the Surcharge is a 19-page briefing for the finance and operations people who own payment cost. The first half is provider-neutral and educational. It covers:
- What the RBA actually decided, what is in scope, and why compliance runs through your payment provider’s contract
- Whether you really have to absorb the fee, with the net position for five business profiles
- What stays: genuine booking and service fees, and discounts that steer customers to cheaper ways to pay
- A dated preparation checklist, and spotlights for e-commerce, platforms and marketplaces, and not-for-profits
- Four responses, from weakest to strongest, and an illustrative worked example of a mid-size online retailer
It’s better to know your numbers before the deadline than after.
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