The Reserve Bank estimates that unwinding card surcharges and resetting interchange will cost payment service providers about $25 million across the industry, a modest sum next to the money it expects to move around the system each year.

Every regulatory overhaul comes with a bill, and the end of card surcharging in Australia is no exception. When surcharges on eftpos, Mastercard and Visa debit and credit cards ended on 1 October 2026, terminals had to be reconfigured, pricing systems updated and new fee caps built into the plumbing that sits behind every tap of a card.

The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) put a price on that work in the impact and implementation chapter of its conclusions paper on merchant card payment costs and surcharging. Its estimate for implementation costs borne by payment service providers is around $25 million across the industry.

That figure sits alongside a far larger number: an estimated reduction in card issuers' revenue of around $660 million a year, assuming no change in behaviour. Put side by side, the two estimates frame the reform's economics. One is a largely upfront cost of changing systems; the other is an ongoing shift in who earns what from card payments.

What the changeover involves

The reforms that took effect on 1 October were not a single switch. According to the RBA, several moving parts landed on the same day:

  • Surcharges on eftpos, Mastercard and Visa debit and credit cards ended, with the RBA concluding that "surcharging no longer works as intended".
  • The interchange cap on consumer credit cards fell to 0.3%, and the weighted-average benchmark for those cards was removed.
  • The cap on commercial credit cards stayed at 0.8%, again with its benchmark removed.
  • Debit and prepaid cards moved to a cap of 8 cents plus 0.16% per transaction, with the weighted-average benchmark staying at 8 cents.

American Express credit card surcharging also ended on 1 October. Amex is not formally regulated by the RBA, but its surcharges came to an end on the same date.

Further changes are scheduled. A 1.0% interchange cap on foreign-issued cards begins on 1 April 2027, and the same date marks the deadline for changes to merchant statements.

The RBA's $25 million estimate covers that work across the whole industry, not for any single business.

The reporting load arrives in stages

A large part of the changeover is about transparency rather than pricing. The RBA has set out a timetable of publication deadlines that runs well into 2027.

Card networks must publish aggregate interchange and scheme fee data, and acquirers must publish merchant service fee data. The first round is due by 30 October 2026, covering the period from 1 July to 30 September 2026. After that, the data must be published within 30 days of the end of each quarter.

Acquirers also face a separate obligation to publish a measure of how much interchange they pass through to merchants. The first of these is due by 30 January 2027. Merchant statement changes follow on 1 April 2027, and Scheme Fee Roadmaps are expected by the same date.

Unlike the one-off job of switching off surcharges at the terminal, quarterly reporting is a standing commitment.

Weighing $25 million against $660 million

The two RBA estimates measure different things and should not be read as a simple profit-and-loss sum. The $25 million is the RBA's estimate of the cost to payment service providers of putting the changes in place. The $660 million is its estimate of the annual reduction in card issuers' revenue from lower interchange, and it rests on the assumption that behaviour does not change.

How much of any interchange saving reaches merchants is the question the new acquirer pass-through measure is designed to make visible. The RBA expects small merchants, most of which do not have so-called strategic rates, to gain the most.

Consumers are the other side of the equation. The RBA estimates that consumers paid about $1.6 billion of the $1.8 billion in annual card surcharges. With surcharges gone, the RBA does not expect a material change in the total price paid at merchants that surcharged, and it describes the inflation impact from any rounding up of prices as "negligible".

The decision followed a lengthy process. The review began in October 2024 and drew more than 260 written submissions and around 150 meetings, according to the RBA's summary of the review.

The central finding was that surcharging had stopped doing its job. Most businesses did not surcharge at all. Around 85% of small merchants and 89% of large merchants did not surcharge, and only about 16% of Australian businesses did.

Against that background, a one-off industry cost of around $25 million was weighed against an ongoing reduction in what the RBA saw as an inefficient arrangement. The RBA did not present the changeover as free; it presented it as a cost that was small relative to the expected shift in payment costs.

What still is not changing

Some practices fall outside the ban, and the RBA's surcharging FAQs list several. Businesses can still build payment costs into their sticker prices. They can offer discounts, including for paying in cash. Weekend and public holiday surcharges, booking fees and service fees are not card surcharges, and terminal rental or processing fees charged to merchants are not surcharges either.

The RBA notes that any exemptions are a matter for the card schemes: "Whether any exemptions are available is a decision for each card network, not the RBA." Not-for-profits and business-to-business payments are not exempt by default, and card payments made on or after 1 October cannot be surcharged even if they were invoiced earlier. Taxi surcharges are governed by state and territory law, and the RBA has informed governments and price regulators about regulated prices.

For providers, those distinctions matter in practice. Systems need to separate a card surcharge, which must go, from a legitimate booking or service fee, which can stay.

The bottom line

The RBA's estimate of around $25 million is the industry's changeover bill for ending card surcharges and resetting interchange caps, spread across payment service providers rather than falling on any one firm. It is a fraction of the roughly $660 million a year in issuer revenue the RBA expects to be redistributed, on the assumption that behaviour does not change. The most visible part of the switch took place on 1 October, but the reporting timetable keeps the changeover going, with the first data due by 30 October 2026 and further milestones through to April 2027.