Card surcharges in Australia: the ban starts 1 October 2026

The short version

• From 1 October 2026, surcharging on eftpos, Mastercard and Visa stops. All three have decided to introduce no-surcharge rules covering credit, debit and prepaid cards on their networks.
• American Express is doing the same on the same date, even though it is not currently subject to formal RBA regulation.
• The RBA enabled this by removing its own prohibition on no-surcharge rules with effect from that date. It concluded that removing surcharging is in the public interest.
• The RBA does not regulate you directly. Merchants deal with an acquirer or payment service provider; the card schemes set the rules those participants must follow, and they reach you through your merchant agreement.
• You will still pay to accept cards. The cost does not disappear on 1 October - only your ability to itemise it to the customer does.

What the rule is until 30 September 2026

Until the ban takes effect, surcharging remains permitted but capped. The rule is cost of acceptance: a business that chooses to surcharge a card type may not surcharge above its own average cost of accepting that card type. Nobody is obliged to surcharge; it is a choice, and the cap applies if you make it.

Two details catch businesses out, and both are on the ACCC's own page:

• You may only include costs that relate to that payment type. If you pay a gateway fee that applies only to credit card transactions, that cost cannot be built into a surcharge on debit.
• One rate across several card types must be the lowest, not the average. The ACCC's worked example: if Visa debit costs you 1% and Visa credit costs 1.5%, a single blended surcharge must be set at 1%. You cannot average the two.

The ban applies to eftpos debit and prepaid, and to Mastercard and Visa credit, debit and prepaid. The ACCC has investigation and enforcement powers over excessive surcharging and acts on reports it receives.

What changes on the day

If you currently recover a meaningful share of your card costs through a surcharge, 1 October 2026 moves that amount from your customers onto your margin, in one step, with no transition. A business turning over $60,000 a month by card and passing on roughly 1.5% has been recovering about $10,800 a year that it will now absorb.

This is also why several “zero cost EFTPOS” and “no cost EFTPOS” plans need looking at before October. Those products are built on passing the fee to the cardholder. Where that mechanism is a surcharge on a designated network, it stops working on the same date, and what you are left with is whatever the underlying rate turns out to be.

Work out what you will be absorbing

What you can do instead

The RBA's published position is that card acceptance costs can be reflected in a business's overall pricing rather than charged separately, which it notes is in line with consumer preference for all-inclusive sticker prices. Its FAQ also points to two practical options:

• Discounts rather than surcharges. A business that wants to steer customers towards cheaper payment methods can offer a discount on those methods. That is a different mechanism to a surcharge and is not what the networks are banning.
• Review your plan and shop around. The RBA explicitly suggests businesses check whether they are on the right payment plan and work with their provider to understand what is actually driving their costs.

The RBA is also implementing reforms intended to reduce what merchants pay, including changes to interchange fees and measures to improve fee transparency. Those are separate from the surcharging change and are set out in the Conclusions Paper linked below.

A sensible order to do this in

1. Pull your last three merchant statements and work out your true effective rate: total fees divided by total card turnover.
2. Work out what you currently recover by surcharging. That is the number that disappears on 1 October 2026.
3. Price your current provider against the alternatives on published rates. A rate difference you shrugged at while you were passing the fee on is a real cost once you are not.
4. If you are above roughly $20,000 a month, ask your provider for a better rate before you switch. Several publish that they will quote custom pricing at that kind of volume.
5. Decide how - or whether - to reflect the cost in your prices, and give yourself time to change menus, price lists and signage before October rather than during it.
6. Check your terminal and checkout are not still configured to add a surcharge after the date. That configuration lives with your provider.