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From 1 October 2026, businesses can no longer add a surcharge when a customer pays by Visa, Mastercard, eftpos or American Express. That covers credit, debit and prepaid cards, and it applies to sole traders and small businesses as well as the big retailers.
If you currently charge a card fee, it has to come off. What can catch you out is that the cost of accepting cards doesn't go away. It moves from your customer to you.
Most people assume the ACCC polices this. It doesn't. The ban is written into the card networks' scheme rules and flows through to your merchant agreement, so your payment provider and the card networks enforce it. What happens if you breach it depends on what your own agreement says, so it's worth reading.
The ACCC still has a role, though. It enforces consumer law on misleading pricing, and how you handle the change can put you on the wrong side of that too.
It's tempting to read the new rules as “surcharges out, cash discounts in” and treat them as interchangeable. They're not, and the order of operations matters.
A card surcharge starts from your normal price and adds something on top when a customer pays by card. A compliant cash discount works the other way: you first build your card acceptance costs into your everyday price, and then offer a discount off that price for customers who pay by cash, PayID or bank transfer.
That distinction isn't just semantics, it's what keeps you within the ACCC's price display rules. A few things to get right:
Done properly, the practical effect is the same outcome business owners are used to: cash and other free-transfer methods cost less than card. The difference is where the maths starts. You raise the base price to reflect the real cost of accepting cards, then discount off that, you don't add a fee on top of an unchanged price.
Two things are happening at once. The surcharge is disappearing, but the wholesale cost of card payments is also falling. Interchange, the fee your provider pays the customer's bank, drops on consumer credit cards from a cap of 0.8% to 0.3%. Debit and prepaid caps also tighten.
That sounds like it balances out, but it isn't automatic. Providers set their own pricing, and a cut in their costs doesn't necessarily reach your statement. If you're on a flat rate, your percentage may not move unless you ask. The RBA is requiring acquirers to publish how much of the interchange cut they pass on, and to give businesses clearer statements, but that only helps if you look.
For a business that has been recovering card costs through a surcharge, the sums are simple. Whatever you were collecting comes out of your margin unless your prices or your merchant fees change.
If you're not sure how much this will cost your business, or how to price around it without eroding your margin, get in touch. We can help you look at the cash flow and pricing impact, and you'll want your payment provider and accountant involved too.
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