.png)
From then, Visa, Mastercard and eftpos will introduce rules preventing businesses from adding a separate surcharge to payments made using their cards. American Express has also confirmed it will remove surcharging from the same date.
Good news for customers.
Less-good news for your business’s gross margin. 😔
Because while the surcharge is disappearing, the cost of accepting the card isn’t.
And that’s the bit business owners need to be thinking about now.
Until 30 September 2026, businesses can continue to pass on card surcharges to customers, provided the surcharge doesn’t exceed the business’s actual cost of accepting that payment method.
From 1 October, that changes. 👇
Visa, Mastercard, eftpos and American Express are all moving to no-surcharge rules. So putting a neat little “+1.5% card fee” on the bottom of the invoice is about to become a thing of the past for those payments.
Importantly, this doesn’t mean businesses will receive card processing for free.
You’ll still pay your bank, payment gateway or merchant provider.
You just won’t be able to recover that cost from your customers as a separate card surcharge.
Instead, the RBA specifically acknowledges businesses can factor payment costs into their overall pricing.
That distinction matters.
For plenty of businesses, card fees have effectively been a pass-through cost.
Customer pays $1,000.
Card processor takes, say, 1.3%.
Business charges the customer an additional 1.3%.
Everyone moves on with their day.
From October, if that fee can’t be separately passed on and you leave your prices exactly where they are, the maths becomes:
Customer pays $1,000.
Card processor still takes its cut.
You wear it.
On one transaction, nobody is calling an emergency board meeting.
Across hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars of annual sales, though, it starts to matter.
Imagine a business turning over $2 million a year, with 70% of customers paying by card and an average processing cost of 1.3%.
That’s around $18,200 a year in card processing costs.
If those costs are currently being recovered through surcharges and suddenly aren’t, there’s $18,200 coming directly off the bottom line unless something else changes.
It’s death by a thousand taps.
Yes. Hopefully. 🤞
As part of the changes, the RBA is also reducing interchange fee caps and introducing greater transparency around merchant fees. The idea is that stopping surcharges shouldn’t simply leave businesses footing the entire bill.
That should put some downward pressure on processing costs.
But there’s an important distinction here:
Interchange fees are only one part of what your business ultimately pays to accept a card.
So don’t assume your current 1.4% merchant fee is magically becoming 0.3% on 1 October.
Your actual cost will depend on your provider, transaction mix, card types, sales volumes and pricing arrangement.
Which brings us to what we think business owners should actually do.
Before automatically putting prices up 1.5%, work out what the change actually costs your business.
Pull the last 12 months of merchant fees.
Look at how much revenue was paid by card.
Work out how much of those fees you currently recover from customers.
Then talk to your payment provider about what your pricing will look like from October.
The RBA is introducing greater fee transparency specifically to make it easier for businesses to understand what they’re paying and shop around, so this is also a pretty good time to check whether your current provider is still competitive.
Once you know the real number, you can make a sensible pricing decision.
Not “What surcharge did we used to charge?”
But:
“How much additional cost are we now absorbing, and what price do we need to maintain the margin we want?”
Much better question.
Don’t automatically absorb it
This is probably the biggest point.
Small increases in costs have an annoying habit of getting absorbed by businesses without anyone making a conscious decision to do it.
Merchant fees go up.
Fuel goes up.
Wages go up.
Insurance goes up.
Rent goes up.
Someone says, “It’s only one percent.”
And eventually the owner is sitting there wondering why turnover is up 10% but profit looks exactly the same.
Margin compression rarely arrives wearing a name badge.
For businesses that currently surcharge, 1 October should trigger a pricing review.
That doesn’t necessarily mean increasing every price.
Maybe your margins can comfortably absorb the cost.
Maybe your merchant fees fall enough that the impact is tiny.
Maybe you encourage lower-cost payment options.
The RBA has confirmed businesses can still offer discounts for particular payment methods, including alternatives they want customers to use.
Or maybe your prices simply need to increase by 0.5%, 1% or 1.5%.
The important bit is that you make the decision deliberately, rather than finding out six months later that you volunteered to pay $20,000 of your customers’ card fees.
Very generous.
Probably not the business strategy we’d recommend.
👉 Work out your actual annual card-processing cost. Not the percentage written on the terminal brochure. The real dollars your business paid over the last 12 months.
👉 Work out what you currently recover through surcharges. That gives you the potential hole you need to fill.
👉 Ask your provider what your fees will be after 1 October. And while you’re there, shop the rate around.
👉 Review your pricing and gross margins. Particularly if you operate on tight margins or process a large percentage of revenue by card.
👉 Update your systems. EFTPOS terminals, online checkout, invoices, payment links, websites and customer communications may all currently reference card surcharges. The ACCC is encouraging businesses to begin preparing these changes now.
And finally:
👉 Don’t wait until October to think about it.
The businesses most exposed here aren’t necessarily the ones paying the highest card fees.
They’re the ones who haven’t worked out what those fees are doing to their margin.
From 1 October 2026, businesses accepting Visa, Mastercard, eftpos and American Express need to get used to a world without passing on a card surcharge.
But that doesn’t mean you have to quietly absorb the cost.
Card processing is a cost of doing business.
And like every other cost of doing business, it needs to form part of how you set your prices.
So before the surcharge disappears, do the numbers.
Because “we’ll just wear it” is still a pricing decision.
It’s just not usually a very good one.
Disclaimer: This article is here to give you general info only, not professional advice specific to your unique situation. While efforts are made to ensure accuracy, the content may change over time. We can’t take responsibility for any decisions based on the contents of this article, so be sure to chat with your accountant or advisor first!
.jpg)
.jpg)
.png)
