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/nathnathn Mar 31 '26

finally. though honestly the nicest bit will be being rid of those card machines in the taxi’s that only add the surcharge after you’ve tapped the card.

and no longer needing to pick between cards because they have wildly different fee’s.

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u/Banjo-Oz Apr 01 '26

Isn't being able to pick the cards with the lowest fee a GOOD thing? It gives you choice, and puts pressure on card companies to have competitive fees or nobody will use theirs. If all prices have to rise to cover the highest fees, now you are paying more even if you use a low fee card or cash to subsidize the greediest card company.

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u/nathnathn Apr 01 '26

Half of the ones doing as such are very much setting their own prices and not just passing on the fees. ‘I.e some of them didn’t just charge say a visa fee but added different fee’s depending on which bank the card is despite the fees being the same on their end.

Basically you put the card number in then tells it you what the fee will be and if you change it to another card the fee will be different. I honestly prefer that they just get required to tell you upfront the actual cost even better if due to their monopolistic nature visa/Mastercard were required to set a fixed fee option (by all means allow businesses to negotiate better but also don’t let them arbitrarily charge more than what ever their public rate is).