Card fees · by trade

What card fees cost an Australian venue, salon or clinic

Card fees are quoted in percentages and paid in dollars. The percentage is easy to find. The dollars take arithmetic: your monthly card turnover, split across tap, insert and online, at the rates your plan actually charges, twelve months running. This page does that arithmetic for three businesses that each put $60,000 a month through cards: a pub, a salon and a clinic. Same turnover, different mix, different bill.

This is the explainer: what card fees are, which parts of your business move them, and what they come to over a year. If you already know that and just want the four providers against each other in one table, go straight to Square vs Zeller vs Tyro vs Stripe. If you want one provider in depth, every one of them has its own page, listed at the bottom of this one.

$60,000 a month, three different trades

The worked examples below render from the published rates of Square, Zeller, Tyro and Stripe, observed 4 October 2026. Tables are generated from the data file at build; nobody retypes a rate on this site, so a stale figure can't hide in a paragraph.

One trap when you compare: providers don't all publish on the same tax basis. A rate quoted excluding GST looks about ten percent cheaper than the same rate quoted inclusive. Every table on this site labels the basis on each row, and we don't compare across bases without saying so.

Where your trade actually changes the answer

A pub takes nearly everything in person, so card-present rates and terminal costs decide its year. A salon books online and takes deposits, so the online rate starts to matter. A clinic billing item numbers online lives on the online rate almost entirely. Read the column that matches how your money arrives.

What moves the number most, in any trade

In order: your online share, because on most schedules below the online rate sits above the card-present one. Tyro comes closest to one rate, with 1.3% on the terminal and 1.4% on Payment Links, and Stripe's percentage is the same both ways with only the fixed cents differing. Then your average sale, because fixed cents per transaction punish small tickets. Then terminal and plan fees, a flat drag that weighs more the less you turn over. The headline percentage matters least often, though not never: Tyro wins every trade column below on the strength of its 1.3%.

One provider at a time

The table above is the comparison. These are the depth pages, one per provider, each carrying the conditions, exceptions and unpublished gaps that a rate table has no room for. Each provider has a different catch, so each page spends its time on a different question.

• Square fees in Australia: two different in-person rates, sorted by the date you opened the account and by which reader you use, and the only schedule here that never states a GST basis for its card rates.
• Zeller fees in Australia: no rental and no subscription, so the terminal is a one-off purchase; and the only provider here that prices a card-on-file payment above an online one.
• Tyro fees in Australia: the only monthly terminal fee on this page, across plans that all carry the same transaction rate; plus a published position on joining and exit fees.
• Stripe fees in Australia: fixed cents on every transaction including in person, a published international card rate, and a domestic price change that has now landed.
• Fresha fees in Australia: why no Australian processing rate could be sourced, and how to read your own statement instead of a figure we would have had to invent.

The rest of the cluster

Four providers head to head in one table: Compare card providers. Terminals and the machine's own annual cost: EFTPOS fees. The rule change from 1 October 2026: the surcharge ban. Your own turnover instead of a worked example: the calculator.