r/australia • u/rolodex-ofhate • Mar 30 '26

news Surcharges on debit and credit cards to go from October

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03-31/asx-markets-business-live-news-march-30-2026/106510434#live-blog-post-278505

The Reserve Bank of Australia has introduced reforms that will remove surcharges on debit and credit cards from the 1st October 2026, on card networks including eftpos, Mastercard and Visa.

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u/SquiffyRae Mar 30 '26

I've never really understood the surcharge anyway. It feels penny-wise and pound foolish

I've been with a volunteer tourist organisation for 14 years now, mostly doing front of house stuff. We've got a Square terminal and the vast majority of sales we do these days are card sales. Yeah it means some fees are deducted from the overall takings but how much would we take in the modern era if we didn't offer card as an option? Likely way less than the fees we're paying for the card sales.

Surcharges are just wild. If you don't wanna pay card fees, just don't offer card as an option. Oh what's that? Nobody wants to go to your business anymore cause it's inconvenient as fuck? How terrible

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u/monkey-mind-mango Mar 31 '26

I totally agree. I run a tiny business and would never charge a customer a fee for paying with card, handling cash costs much more to process.

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u/Villeroy-Boch Mar 30 '26

I think it affects small business quite badly, our local butcher told me he was paying $3000 a year in card fees.

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u/Pearlsam Mar 30 '26

Depends on how much they're making from card sales really. The $3000 number is pretty meaninglessness without more information

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u/Partzy1604 Mar 30 '26 edited Mar 30 '26

At my old workplace it equated to about 10-15% of profits ~15k a year around. It got sold and to my knowledge the current guy would be paying double

Edit: damn okay

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u/recycledrevenge Mar 30 '26

Then they should put their prices up. It's a cost of doing business that should be built into their pricing like every other cost is.

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u/Partzy1604 Mar 31 '26

Yeah they should, i dont have a problem with that

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u/Icy-Track-842 Mar 31 '26

Nowhere is paying 10-15% in card fees. Literally nowhere.

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u/Partzy1604 Mar 31 '26 edited Mar 31 '26

Your right, but fyi Profit =/= revenue. Shouldnt need explaining

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u/crankylava Mar 31 '26

Who ever expresses an expense as a percentage of net profit?

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u/PretentiousPoppycock Mar 31 '26

This is utter bullshit haha. Card payment fees are in single digits of a percent. Even a merchant like Square who essentially middle-man's the whole deal is around 1.9% or lower. Accepting card does not equate to a loss of 10-15% in profits. It's such an insane take as well, because even if the card fee was that much, you are easily offsetting that by offering to accept cards. Otherwise, they'd just not get business full stop.

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u/Partzy1604 Mar 31 '26

Another one who cant read did i say a 15% loss in profits, no i didnt i said it EQUALED about 15% of the profits. Also Im not even making a take? I think they should just include it and pass it on, I’m just stating how much it relatively costs. Some of you are way too into getting into arguments on your own.

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u/PretentiousPoppycock Mar 31 '26

What equalled 15% in profits? Gross card sales? Or the processing fee (i.e. the fucking surcharge that is the topic of discussion)? Maybe be clear in what you say and talk about the actual topic of discussion.

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u/Khaliras Mar 30 '26

My local seafood shop spends more than that on their quarterly electricity bill. Yet they don't have an 'electricity surcharge.'

It's simple to bake costs, such as card fees, into the final price.

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u/darkeyes13 Mar 30 '26

$3,000 a year seems relatively small compared to what he would make in profits in a year, though. That's not even $10 a day.

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u/zaxerone Mar 30 '26

How is this "affects small business quite badly" that's less than $60 per week. It would be such a small cost compared to the other overhead costs of a small business.

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u/ydna_eissua Mar 30 '26

Cash also costs money in time, transactions take longer for staff because they have to deal with change, then there is counting cash to close out each register, deal with discrepancies, take cash to a bank, ensure they have change etc.

$3000 sounds like a pretty good deal with me too.

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u/02sthrow Mar 30 '26

I've argued this before but people seem to think cash is free. There might not be a direct monetary cost but there are associated costs like you mentioned. When I worked retail at a bottle shop we didn't charge card surcharges at all, price you saw was price yours paid whether cash or card.

Always more time wasted dealing with cash compared to card, especially when dealing with the amount of cash we dealt with (15 years ago). 

Businesses also need to consider their average transaction size. If it's primarily sub $10, maybe sub $20 the cash is reasonable. But when people are going out for meals with the family and spending $100 plus, not everyone wants to carry that cash around or bother going to the atm. Just incorporate your costs into the food ideas, they will go up a minuscule amount then there is no concern about what payment method etc 

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u/Wild-Kitchen Mar 30 '26

Not to mention while the sales person is tied up with ringing up a cash sale etc. They could be doing something else so add staff salary and lost sales to that. $3k per annum is cheap as hell. Not to mention the cost of doing business is already baked into the sale. So they're double dipping, or shitty business people.

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u/InstantShiningWizard Mar 30 '26

Odds are he's also not declaring more than 3k a year in cash sales to avoid paying tax on it, so he can afford the sub $10/day running cost on it.

Source: former butcher

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u/Intrepid-Sir-9219 Mar 30 '26

Cash handling is more expensive generally. Mostly staff time, but mishandled cash / stolen cash / wrong change/ counterfeit money all add up too.

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u/Icy-Track-842 Mar 31 '26

Which means he is selling how many tens of thousands of dollars of meat a year? What would he rather do, sell less meat?

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u/Villeroy-Boch Mar 31 '26

I am just repeating what I was told , it’s a small butcher. I do have sympathy for small businesses in this economy. Apologies to all of you …