Card Surcharges Are Being Banned From 1 October 2026 – Is Your Business Ready?

From 1 October 2026, businesses across Australia will no longer be able to charge customers a surcharge for paying by card. The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) is banning surcharges on Visa, Mastercard and eftpos transactions, as part of a broader reform aimed at simplifying pricing and cutting costs for consumers.

At the same time, the RBA is capping the interchange fees banks and payment providers can charge businesses for processing card payments – dropping the rate from 0.8% to 0.3%. In theory, this should make it cheaper for businesses to accept card payments in the first place, even without a surcharge to fall back on.

What this means for you:

If your business currently adds a surcharge when customers pay by card, that option disappears from 1 October. You’ll need to decide whether to absorb the cost of card acceptance yourself, or build it into your prices instead. Either way, now’s the time to review your pricing, and update any signage, menus or website text that references a card surcharge.

Where Avoda stands:

We’ve never charged our clients a surcharge for card payments, and this change won’t affect our pricing. If you’ve been paying us by card, nothing changes on your end.

A question worth sitting with:

If you do currently surcharge, this is a good moment to think it through properly rather than leave it to the last minute:

• Can you absorb the cost of card acceptance without it denting your margin?
• Or do your prices need a modest adjustment to account for it?
• Have you actually worked out what card acceptance costs you as a percentage of revenue, so any price change is based on real numbers rather than a guess?

It’s a small change on paper, but for businesses that rely on surcharge income, it’s worth getting ahead of it before October rather than reacting to it after the fact. If you’d like help modelling the impact on your margins, get in touch, we’re happy to run the numbers with you.

Disclaimer

This article is general information only and does not take into account your personal circumstances.