On the 31st March 2026 the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) announced that businesses that accept card payments (ie merchants) will be banned from imposing surcharges on eftpos, Visa, and Mastercard transactions, effective from the 1st October 2026.
Key Points
- Scope: The ban covers all debit, prepaid, and credit card payments on Visa, Mastercard, and EFTPOS networks. Excluded for now are a number of payment methods including American Express, ApplePay and GooglePay
- Impact: Businesses cannot pass on card payment processing costs directly to customers, requiring them to absorb these costs or adjust their product or service prices.
- Interchange Fees: The RBA is lowering interchange fee caps paid by merchants to card issuers to help reduce the overall cost burden on businesses.
What does this mean for FeeSynergy Payment Gateway and Collect Direct Debit system users?
- Software: There will be no impact to FeeSynergy’s payments software. Our systems are configured to allow firms (merchants) to set their own credit and debit card surcharge limits.
- Merchant Fees: Under our arrangement with Westpac, FeeSynergy clients are already on very low merchant fees. Note 1 When the new caps on Interchange Fees comes into effect, the merchant fees currently charged by Westpac should be lower. We will advise further as this aspect becomes clearer.
- For firms not currently passing on a surcharge there should be no negative impact.
- For firms currently passing on a surcharge, you will need to decide how you manage the impact of the ban.
If your firm is using other third party payment solution providers
There are many card payment solution providers charging merchant fees in excess of 1.5%.
Now is the time to start reviewing those provider’s rates and find out what they will be doing to bring down the costs to your firm.
Whilst reviewing the merchant fees of your card payment providers, it would make sense that you also analyse the costs of any other payment services you are using (in particular Direct Debit providers).
Note 1: FeeSynergy does not add a margin or “take a clip” on the fees charged to you by Westpac.