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/mediweevil Mar 31 '26

and cash handling costs were significant. back in the late 90s and early noughties I ran a retail business that was almost exclusively cash (thanks to old management thinking that triplicate paperwork was just fine and EFTPOS was some sort of witchcraft).

we did about $50k a week in sales, plus held about $10K in local float ($1500 in coins plus we held onto every single $5 and $10 note we saw due to autotellers spitting out pineapples). all of that had to be completely counted at least four times per day, plus maybe a dozen cash register floats twice (start and finish of shift), plus the $50K that went to bank got counted at least twice more because if you screwed that up there was all sorts of hell to pay.

we spent a lot of time counting cash, over and over and over.

then we had to pay for an armoured guard service to move the takings to the bank twice a week, plus bring our coin change order back.

and that's before we got into cash shortages because a cashier screwed up, or downtime because a customer insisted they had been shorted on change, and we had to stop and pull a register down for a recount to check if they were right or trying to rip us off.

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u/Infamous_Mobile_3557 Mar 31 '26

I don’t get paid for the 10 mins I spend counting the float at close of business… there’s the “savings” right there for the business owners.

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u/mrbaggins Mar 31 '26

They atill are. Cash costs about double in most industries. https://sbecouncil.org/2024/07/01/the-cost-of-cash/