Key Highlights

  • Designated card networks will publish quarterly aggregate interchange and scheme fee data.
  • The data will be broken down by domestic and international, debit and credit, card-present and card-not-present, and tokenised transactions.
  • The RBA says the tokenised breakdown is meant to shed light on mobile wallet fees, with further transparency changes due from 1 April 2027.

Designated card networks will have to publish quarterly fee data that separates out tokenised transactions, a breakdown the Reserve Bank says is intended to shed light on mobile wallet fees.

Tapping a phone or smartwatch at the checkout has become routine for many Australians. What has been far less visible is what those payments cost the businesses that accept them. Among the conclusions of the Reserve Bank of Australia's (RBA) review of retail payments regulation, released on 31 March 2026, is a requirement that aims to bring some of that hidden cost information into the open.

Under the RBA's conclusions, designated card networks are to publish aggregate interchange and scheme fee data every quarter. The data is not to be a single lump sum. It must come with breakdowns that include:

  • domestic versus international transactions;
  • debit versus credit;
  • card-present versus card-not-present payments; and
  • tokenised transactions.

It is the final category that has put mobile wallets in the spotlight. The RBA has said the tokenised breakdown is intended to shed light on mobile wallet fees.

Two wholesale fees, now with a public scorecard

Interchange fees and scheme fees are both part of the wholesale cost of accepting a card payment. They are not shown on a shopper's receipt, and until the new requirement there was no regular, network-by-network public reporting of them in the form the RBA has now set out. The RBA's chapter on the transparency of wholesale fees is where the publication requirement sits.

Two features of the requirement are worth noting. First, the data is aggregate. It is designed to show the overall picture across each network rather than the fees paid by any individual business. Second, it is regular. Quarterly publication means the figures can be tracked over time, so changes in the mix of fees, or in the share of payments made in particular ways, should become easier to observe.

The categories also map onto distinctions that matter for cost. A card used in a shop is a card-present payment; an online purchase is generally card-not-present. Domestic and foreign-issued cards are treated differently under the RBA's interchange caps, and debit and credit cards have separate caps of their own. Publishing data across each of these splits gives a more detailed view than a single network-wide total could.

Why tokenised payments get their own line

In general terms, a tokenised transaction is one where the card details are replaced by a substitute token during the payment, the approach associated with phone and watch wallets. That association is why the RBA has linked the tokenised breakdown directly to mobile wallet fees.

The RBA's stated intention is to shed light on those fees. The conclusions do not, in the material summarised here, set out figures for what mobile wallet fees currently are, and this article does not attempt to estimate them. The point of the requirement is that the networks themselves will report the data, giving merchants, policymakers and the public a common reference point that has not previously been available on a regular, published basis.

For merchants, the value of such data may lie mainly in comparison. A business that knows the aggregate fee picture for tokenised payments is better placed to understand how its own costs line up, even though the published figures will not describe any individual merchant's pricing.

How the disclosure fits the wider reforms

The fee publication requirement is one part of a broader package. Most of the changes from the review, including the removal of card surcharges and lower domestic interchange caps, took effect on 1 October 2026. Some payment-cost transparency changes take effect later, on 1 April 2027.

From 1 October 2026, surcharging was removed on eftpos, Mastercard and Visa transactions, covering debit, prepaid and credit cards. American Express also removed surcharging from that date, although Amex is not formally regulated by the RBA. The ban applies only to surcharges added because a customer pays by card. Weekend and public holiday surcharges, booking fees, service fees and the fees payment service providers charge for terminals and processing are not affected.

At the same time, the RBA lowered several interchange caps:

The domestic debit and prepaid cap fell to 8 cents, or 0.16 per cent on an ad valorem basis, from 10 cents or 0.2 per cent. The domestic consumer credit cap was lowered to 0.3 per cent from 0.8 per cent, with the benchmark removed. The commercial credit cap stays at 0.8 per cent, also with its benchmark removed. A new single cap of 1.0 per cent applies to transactions on foreign-issued cards, which were previously unregulated.

The RBA expects these changes to lower wholesale card payment costs for merchants "by around $910 million per year", with small businesses expected to benefit most.

Transparency complements those caps. Lower regulated fees reduce costs directly, while published data helps show where costs sit across the parts of the system the caps do not fully describe. The RBA's frequently asked questions note that businesses can review their payment plans and shop around for providers; more visible aggregate fee information sits alongside that guidance.

Context for consumers and businesses

The surcharge removal followed the RBA's finding that "Consumers are estimated to be paying $1.6 billion of a total $1.8 billion in card payment surcharges" a year on designated networks. With card surcharges gone, the RBA's FAQ states: "Those costs can be reflected in a business's overall pricing."

That shift arguably makes wholesale fee transparency more relevant, not less. When card costs were often recovered through a separate surcharge at the till, the cost was visible to the shopper at the point of sale. With those costs now folded into general pricing, published network data becomes one of the main public windows into how much card acceptance, including payments made through mobile wallets, actually costs across the system.

The bottom line

Designated card networks will publish quarterly aggregate interchange and scheme fee data, broken down by domestic and international, debit and credit, card-present and card-not-present, and tokenised transactions. The RBA says the tokenised breakdown is meant to shed light on mobile wallet fees. The requirement sits alongside the 1 October removal of card surcharges and lower interchange caps, with some further transparency changes due from 1 April 2027. Businesses wanting to understand how the changes affect them may wish to check their arrangements with their payment provider.

This reporting concerns disclosure of network and interchange fees for tokenised transactions. It is not the introduction of a new wallet-specific charge. Different publication and transparency obligations commence on different dates.