Economic News

Those two words, applied to leading indicators of the labour market, attracted far less attention than the headline decision on 29 September, when the Reserve Bank's Monetary Policy Board lifted the cash rate target by 25 basis points to 4.60%. The Board's statement said …

Those are the headline numbers from an International Monetary Fund study that Monetary Policy Board member Iain Ross AO drew on in his speech "A Wage-price Spiral: What are the Chances?", delivered at the University of Melbourne on 22 September 2026. The study's most …

Tap a card at a café, a hardware store or a hairdresser on Wednesday, and there may be a small extra charge on the screen for paying that way. Do the same on Thursday, 1 October 2026, and that line item should be gone.

For a business owner, the new rules can be summed up in one sentence: from 1 October 2026, you cannot charge customers extra for paying by eftpos, Mastercard, Visa or American Express, but some other fees and pricing tools remain available.

Picture a familiar moment at a café counter: the coffee is listed at one price on the board, the card reader shows a slightly higher number, and a small line on the receipt explains the difference as a card surcharge. From Thursday 1 October …

What does it cost an Australian business when a visitor from abroad taps a card at the register? For most customers, the question never comes up. For merchants in tourist precincts, hotels, tour operators and online stores with international buyers, it can be a …

More than 260 written submissions. About 150 industry meetings. The Reserve Bank of Australia's Review of Merchant Card Payment Costs and Surcharging, which concluded in March 2026, was one of the more heavily consulted pieces of payments policy in recent years. Most public attention …