Key Highlights

  • All acquirers must issue more detailed merchant statements by 1 April 2027.
  • The statements are the final step in a three-step disclosure timetable.
  • The timetable moves from industry-level information to individual merchants.
  • Detailed statements will help merchants see the fees they are actually paying.

Ask a small Business owner what they paid last month to accept cards, and the honest answer is often a single total. Breaking that number down into its parts has not always been straightforward. The Reserve Bank of Australia's (RBA) retail payments reforms include a staged series of transparency requirements that end, on 1 April 2027, with all acquirers providing more detailed merchant statements.

The requirement appears in the RBA's card surcharges FAQ, published on 14 September 2026. It is the final item in a three-step disclosure timetable that began on 30 October 2026.

A three-step staircase

The disclosure timetable moves from the industry level to the individual merchant over about six months. Set out in the RBA's FAQ, it runs:

  • 30 October 2026: card networks and large acquirers start publishing specified card payment fee information.
  • 30 January 2027: large acquirers publish how interchange reductions flowed through to merchant service fees.
  • 1 April 2027: all acquirers provide more detailed merchant statements.

Each step answers a different question. The first, which began on Friday 30 October, is about published fee information from networks and the biggest acquirers. The second asks whether lower interchange, introduced on domestic cards from 1 October 2026, has actually shown up in what large acquirers charge merchants. The third shifts the focus from published industry information to what each merchant receives about their own account.

Notably, the third step widens the net, which matters for merchants whose acquirer is not one of the large players and who would otherwise sit outside the earlier disclosure steps. The first two obligations fall on large acquirers (and, in the first case, the networks). The 1 April 2027 statement requirement applies to all acquirers.

Why statements matter more after 1 October

The context for the disclosure push is the removal of card surcharges. From 1 October 2026, the card networks' no-surcharge rules apply, covering eftpos, Mastercard and Visa (credit, debit and prepaid), American Express Credit cards, UnionPay and, from 5 October 2026, PayPal. With surcharging off the table for those cards, a business can no longer add a separate line to a customer's bill to recover the cost of card acceptance.

That changes the commercial calculation. If card costs are absorbed into a business's overall pricing, then knowing exactly what those costs are, and whether they are falling, becomes more important. A detailed statement is the document that shows it, month by month, for the business that actually pays the fees rather than for the industry as a whole.

Governor Michele Bullock told the Senate Economics Legislation Committee on 28 October: "So far, several large providers have reduced their card processing fees for small businesses." The statement requirement is one way for a merchant to see whether that has happened in their own case.

What the statements sit alongside

The 1 April 2027 date was not chosen in isolation. It is also the day the RBA's interchange caps extend to foreign-issued cards acquired in Australia, six months after lower domestic caps began. So a merchant's first statement under the new requirement will arrive in a period in which both domestic and foreign-issued cards are covered by caps.

Several other cost lines will continue regardless. The RBA's FAQ says payment service providers' fees for terminal rental or transaction processing are not covered by the Surcharge removal. Those fees are still set commercially. More detailed statements may make them easier to see, but the reforms do not set them.

The FAQ also lists weekend and public holiday surcharges, booking fees and service fees as outside the card surcharge removal. They are charges a business applies to customers, rather than costs on a merchant statement, but they are part of the same picture of what is and is not caught by the new rules.

What we do not yet know

The RBA's published material available does not set out the precise contents of the more detailed statements, or how they must be presented. Nor does it estimate how much merchants will save from the interchange caps, either in aggregate or for any type of business.

It is also too early to judge the second step. Large acquirers have until 30 January 2027 to publish how interchange reductions flowed through to merchant service fees, so there is not yet a published account of pass-through.

A few other points remain fixed in the guidance:

  • There is no business exemption from the surcharge removal, including for not-for-profits, unless card network rules or a law or regulation provides one.
  • Card networks, not the RBA, decide exemptions, including for business-to-business card payments.
  • Customers who believe they have been wrongly surcharged are directed to raise it with the business first, then the card network shown on the EFTPOS receipt, a state or territory consumer protection agency if misled on pricing, or the ACCC for false or misleading price displays.

The bottom line

The detailed merchant statement requirement is the end point of a disclosure sequence that started with published fee information on 30 October 2026 and continues with pass-through reporting by large acquirers by 30 January 2027. From 1 April 2027, every acquirer, not only the largest, must give merchants more detailed statements.

For a business that can no longer surcharge customers on covered cards, that matters because card costs now sit inside its own margins. The RBA has capped interchange on domestic cards and will do so for foreign-issued cards from the same April date, but it does not set the fees providers charge for terminals and processing. The statements are designed to make the result visible. Whether individual merchants end up paying less will be for those statements, and the January pass-through disclosures, to show.