Card fees · Australia
Zeller fees in Australia
Zeller's shape is the simplest of the four: buy the terminal once, pay a rate on what goes through it, and carry no monthly line at all. That makes it easy to price and easy to get wrong, because the cost that varies on Zeller sits outside the counter rate in the headline. It shows up when the payment is taken away from the counter. Zeller's published schedule is below, observed 4 October 2026.
Zeller's published Australian rates
incl. GST
| Payment type | Published rate | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| In person (card present) | 1.4% | Per in-person card payment on Zeller Terminal, including GST. |
| Online | 1.1% | Zeller Invoice and Xero Invoice transaction fee, domestic cards, no per-transaction cents (was 1.7% + 25c in August 2026). Zeller states separate pricing applies to international cards. |
| Manually keyed / card on file | 1.75% + 25c | Zeller Virtual Terminal, domestic cards. Zeller states separate pricing applies to international cards. |
| International cards | Not separately published | No distinct international rate appears on the published pricing we checked. The calculator applies this provider's domestic rate to international volume, so the real cost could be higher. |
Zeller states its 1.4% Zeller Terminal transaction fee is inclusive of GST.
Monthly and fixed costs
Zeller states there are no monthly EFTPOS terminal rental fees and no monthly subscription fee. The terminal is purchased outright, so the hardware is a one-off cost rather than a monthly one.
Other published charges
| Charge | Published amount |
|---|---|
| Zeller POS integrated payments | 1.2% per transaction on Zeller Terminal when the payment comes through Zeller POS |
| MOTO (over-the-phone) payments | 1.7% including GST |
Negotiating. Zeller's pricing page invites businesses seeking a better rate to get in touch.
Where these numbers come from
Zeller: Pricing (observed 2026-10-04)
You own the terminal, so the hardware is a one-off
Zeller states there are no monthly EFTPOS terminal rental fees and no monthly subscription fee. The terminal is purchased outright, so the hardware is a one-off cost rather than a monthly one.
That inverts the usual arithmetic. Where a rented terminal charges you every month whether it is busy or idle, an owned one is a single cost at the start and nothing afterwards, so the longer you keep it the cheaper each year looks. It also means the cost sits in a different place in your books: a purchase up front rather than a recurring expense. We do not publish a hardware price here, because what a terminal costs varies by model and by whatever deal is running. Get that figure from Zeller directly and treat it as a one-time addition to the annual totals on this site, which are processing costs only.
The practical consequence: Zeller is hardest to beat at low turnover, where a monthly rental would be spread across very little volume, and its advantage narrows as turnover grows and the rate itself starts to dominate.
Card on file is Zeller's dearest rate, and that is unusual
Read the table above in order and something stands out. Zeller charges 1.1% on a Zeller Invoice and 1.75% + 25c through the Virtual Terminal. Of the four providers this site prices, Zeller is the only one that charges more for a manually keyed or card-on-file payment than for an ordinary online one. On the other three, keying a card costs the same as taking it through a checkout.
It is a small gap and it will not decide most businesses. It decides yours if card-on-file is how you actually get paid: a clinic rebilling stored cards, a salon charging a no-show fee, anyone taking card details over the phone. If that is the bulk of your volume, the rate to put in the calculator is the Virtual Terminal one, not the 1.4% on the front of the pricing page.
The rate Zeller does not print
- Zeller says international cards are priced separately, then does not say how. Both the Invoice and Virtual Terminal entries in Zeller's schedule state that separate pricing applies to international cards, without publishing that pricing. So this is a known unknown rather than an absence: Zeller has told you a different rate exists. The calculator on this site applies Zeller's domestic rate to international volume because that is the only figure published, so for any business taking meaningful overseas trade its answer is unconfirmed on that share. Ask Zeller for the international rate in writing before you rely on a comparison that includes it.
- The headline rate is negotiable in principle. Zeller's pricing page invites businesses seeking a better rate to get in touch. No threshold is attached to that invitation, so there is no volume at which you can tell in advance whether asking is worth the phone call.
There is no card surcharging in Australia from 1 October 2026. Whatever a surcharge has been recovering for you has to come from your prices or your margin from that date.
This page is the detail. The comparison lives elsewhere
Everything above is Zeller on its own terms: what Zeller publishes, what it charges for, and the conditions attached. That is deliberately a one-provider view. A rate on its own tells you very little. What matters is what it comes to across a year of your turnover, at your average ticket, on your mix of in-person and online. Three other pages do that arithmetic.
- What card fees cost a venue, salon or clinic: the hub, where Zeller is costed against every other provider over a year, in three trades. Start there if you have not settled on a provider yet.
- Square vs Zeller vs Tyro vs Stripe, head to head: the four published rate cards in one table, then the annual total across six turnover and ticket combinations.
- Run your own numbers: the same engine, on your turnover instead of a worked example.
Once you know the number, the next question is what you do about it
Card fees are one line of the software-and-payments bill. The booking platform is the other, and that's the line we can move: BookMyVenue takes no commission on any booking from any source, charges no per-booking fee, and publishes every price on one page, GST noted. If a platform is clipping your transactions, compare that against a flat bill.