Australia Card Surcharge Ban 2026: What Changes on 1 October

Which card networks and payment methods are affected?

The RBA formally regulates — “designates” — only three card networks: eftpos, Mastercard and Visa. It’s removing the rule that, since 2016, stopped those three from banning surcharges on their own networks. American Express and UnionPay aren’t RBA-designated, but have each separately announced they’re introducing the same no-surcharge rule from 1 October 2026. PayPal isn’t a card network at all — it’s a payment service — and its own updated User Agreement confirms a no-surcharge rule starting 5 October 2026, four days after the main change.

Is there a new law banning surcharges?

Not directly, and it’s easy to overstate this in either direction. There’s no new statute that says “shops can’t surcharge.” What happened is narrower: the RBA made a formal standards variation removing the prohibition on “no-surcharge” rules for the three networks it designates. Those networks then chose to introduce their own no-surcharge rules, which reach merchants contractually — through scheme rules and merchant agreements with acquirers and payment providers — not through a regulator acting on individual businesses. The RBA’s own FAQ is explicit: “The RBA does not directly regulate merchants.”

In practice this means enforcement runs through your payment provider, not the ACCC or the RBA directly. Most major providers have indicated they’ll remove surcharging functionality from terminals around 1 October 2026. Businesses still pay their payment provider to accept cards — that cost doesn’t disappear, it just can’t be itemised as a separate customer-facing surcharge.

Interchange fee cuts: the other half of the reform

Alongside the surcharge change, the RBA is also lowering the wholesale interchange fee caps that flow into what merchants pay to accept cards. These take effect the same day, 1 October 2026, for Australian-issued cards, with a separate cap for foreign-issued cards following on 1 April 2027.

The RBA estimates this reduces merchants’ wholesale card payment costs by about $910 million a year system-wide. That’s a system-wide estimate of wholesale cost reduction, not a promise that any individual merchant’s processing rate will fall by a specific amount — what actually lands on your statement depends on your acquirer, your pricing plan (interchange-plus vs flat-rate), and your card mix. On the consumer side, the RBA separately estimates around $1.8 billion was paid in designated-network surcharges in 2024/25, of which about $1.6 billion was paid by consumers and $0.2 billion by businesses.

Surcharge impact calculator

See what your current surcharge is actually worth, and what it would take to replace it through your base pricing instead.

Can I offer a discount for cash or another payment method?

Yes. The RBA’s own FAQ confirms businesses can continue to offer discounts for a preferred payment method — that’s treated differently from adding a card surcharge, since a discount doesn’t add a fee that only card-paying customers face. Any pricing or advertising around this still needs to comply with consumer law, meaning the displayed or advertised price should generally be the full price a customer pays without the discount.

Can a business rename a card surcharge as an admin or service fee?

Not simply to get around the new rules. The ACCC has explicitly warned businesses not to try to avoid a card network’s no-surcharge rule by describing a card payment surcharge as another type of fee or charge. If a fee applies only because a customer chose a particular card or payment method, calling it an “admin fee,” “processing fee” or “handling fee” doesn’t automatically make it something else — the ACCC treats this as a form of misleading conduct under Australian Consumer Law, regardless of the label used. Genuine fees that apply to every customer equally, such as a booking fee charged no matter how someone pays, are a different matter.

What happens after 1 October 2026?

• 30 October 2026 — the designated networks (eftpos, Mastercard, Visa) and large acquirers begin publishing merchant fee information, intended to make it easier for businesses to compare providers.
• 1 April 2027 — the interchange cap for foreign-issued cards (1.00%) takes effect, alongside further changes to what’s shown on merchant statements.
• Ongoing — the RBA has said it will continue monitoring how wholesale cost reductions flow through to what merchants actually pay, as part of its broader transparency push.

FAQS – Australia Card Surcharge Ban 2026