Australia's card surcharge rules are changing. Here's how to protect your margin.

What's actually changing

The Reserve Bank of Australia finished its review of merchant card payment costs in March 2026. From 1 October 2026, the RBA will allow eftpos, Visa and Mastercard to introduce no-surcharge rules for prepaid, debit and credit card payments. Once those network rules apply, businesses accepting those cards cannot add a separate surcharge for those payment types.

The RBA's reasoning: surcharging stopped doing its job. Customers found it confusing and poorly disclosed, and it no longer steered anyone toward cheaper payment methods. Australians currently pay around $1.6 billion a year in surcharges on these networks — from October, that separate checkout line is expected to stop.

Three other changes land alongside the ban:

• Interchange caps drop the same day. Consumer credit interchange falls to 0.3% of the transaction, and debit is capped at 8 cents or 0.16%. Small businesses are expected to benefit most because they tend to pay closer to the existing caps.
• Fees become public.From October 2026 card networks must publish their interchange and scheme fees quarterly, and large acquirers must publish what they charge merchants. From April 2027 your statements must clearly break down what you're paying.
• Foreign cards get a cap too — 1.0% from April 2027.

Note what's not covered: American Express, PayPal and BNPL services sit outside the designated networks, so different rules apply there.

What it means in dollars

If you don't surcharge today — like the majority of merchants — the change itself may not alter your checkout experience, and the interchange cuts should modestly lower your card costs. Check your statements from October and make sure your provider passes the savings through.

If you do surcharge — and in hospitality, plenty do — the maths is blunt. Say you take $30,000 a month on card with a 1.2% surcharge:

That cost doesn't vanish — it moves from a line your customer paid to a line you absorb. The question is how you absorb it. Run your own numbers with our free calculator.

The three ways businesses will respond

1. Blanket price rise.Add 2% to everything and move on. It works, but it's lazy — it overprices your competitive items (the ones customers compare) and underprices the rest. On a menu where a $4.50 coffee sits next to a $16 burger, a flat percentage treats them identically when customer price sensitivity is completely different.

2. Quietly absorb it.Do nothing and eat 1–2% of card revenue. On thin hospitality margins, that's often the difference between a good month and a flat one.

3. Reprice deliberately.Spread the adjustment across items by what each can carry: 20–50 cents on low-sensitivity items, nothing on your traffic drivers, and round to price points that feel natural. Customers notice a $4.50 coffee becoming $4.60 far less than a “1.6% card surcharge” line at checkout — and from October, the surcharge line is expected to disappear for eftpos, Visa and Mastercard card payments.

Getting ready before 1 October

• Find your real card cost. Pull your last merchant statement. For small businesses, card acceptance typically runs 0.85%–2% depending on mix. That number — not a guess — is what your pricing needs to cover.
• If you surcharge, plan the switch-off. You can keep a cost-reflective surcharge under the current rules until the new network rules take effect. Have the new menu prices ready to go live by 1 October, not scrambled together that week.
• Reprice item by item. Decide which items carry the adjustment and which stay put. Your top sellers deserve the most care.
• Watch the marketplace commissions too.While you're protecting 1–2% of margin from card costs, high marketplace commissions can be the bigger leak. Every repeat customer you move to direct ordering protects margin beyond the surcharge change itself.
• Check your October statements. Interchange caps drop the same day the ban starts. The transparency rules exist so you can hold your payment provider to it.

How Pay-E handles it

Pay-E helps you prepare for the post-surcharge checkout without turning pricing into a spreadsheet exercise:

• Clear checkout. Pay-E online menu orders show the customer one clean itemised price without a separate Pay-E card surcharge line.
• The repricing assistant does the menu maths. Tell it your card cost, pick your rounding, preview every item's new price, untick the ones you want to protect, apply in one click. No spreadsheet.
• Direct orders keep the bigger margin. Your menu, your customers, your Stripe account — orders come to you without a marketplace commission in the middle.

The ban is a nudge to do what good operators do anyway: know your costs, price deliberately, and own the customer relationship.

Pay-E does not provide legal or financial advice. Review official RBA and ACCC guidance for your business's circumstances.