Merchant fees survived the surcharge ban. They’re in your price now.
Merchant fees survived the surcharge ban. They’re in your price now.
Card surcharges ended on 1 October 2026. Merchant fees didn’t. Every card tap still costs your business money – the charge just moved from the customer’s receipt into your costs. Whether the Reserve Bank’s wholesale fee cuts reached you depends on your payment plan, and for many venues they haven’t.
Sources: RBA and ABA, 2026; RBA Conclusions Paper, March 2026; RBA Retail Payments Statistics, August 2026.
The short version
- Card surcharges on eftpos, Mastercard, Visa and Amex ended on 1 October 2026.
- The RBA also cut wholesale interchange caps. The saving only reaches you if your payment provider passes it on, and many flat-rate plans haven’t changed.
- Hospitality, fuel and convenience groups are pushing payment providers to show whether the cuts flowed through.
- Cash carries no merchant fee on the sale. An ATM on site puts cash in your customers’ hands, inside your venue, ready to spend.
The fee is still there. It just changed hands.
Since 1 October 2026, Australian businesses can no longer add a surcharge to payments on eftpos, Mastercard, Visa or American Express cards. The aim was simpler pricing: customers see one price and pay one price.
What didn’t change is the cost of accepting cards. The card surcharge ban didn’t remove merchant fees. It moved them. Card acceptance now sits inside your margin, like rent and power, funded from what you charge for goods and services.
About 16% of businesses were surcharging before the ban. For those venues, a real cost became invisible to the customer and very visible on the bottom line.
Did the wholesale fee cut reach you?
Alongside the ban, the Reserve Bank cut the caps on interchange – the wholesale fee behind every card transaction. For domestic consumer credit cards, the cap fell from 0.8% to 0.3%. For domestic debit, it is now 8 cents per transaction or 0.16%.
Those savings are real. Whether you see them depends on how your plan is built.
On interchange-linked pricing, the lower wholesale cost flows straight through to your statement. On a flat-rate plan, you only benefit if your provider chose to cut the rate. Some of the major banks trimmed their single-rate plans before 1 October. As of early October 2026, several of the big flat-rate providers had published no change at all.
The RBA will require large acquirers to publish how interchange cuts flowed through to merchant fees, but not until 30 January 2027. Until then, the quickest check is to put your September and October merchant statements side by side.
Industry groups are watching
Bodies representing hospitality, fuel and convenience retailers have flagged patchy pass-through of the interchange cuts as a priority. The RBA’s Payments System Regulation Review, which closed submissions on 7 August 2026, covers card acceptance costs and how savings flow from wholesale to merchant level. Its priorities are expected by the end of 2026.
The surcharge ban did not change ATM fees – the fee shown on screen when a customer withdraws cash. Those rules are separate. See how ATM fees are set.
Cash doesn’t come with a merchant fee
A card tap costs your business a percentage of the sale. A cash sale doesn’t: no percentage to a bank, a card network or a terminal provider. Cash has its own handling costs, but nothing is taken off the top of each sale.
Cash use in Australia has held up. Around 15% of payments were made in cash in 2025, up from 13% in 2022, and about half of Australians use cash in a typical week. Since the surcharge ban, more businesses are offering a small cash discount to steer customers to a lower-cost way to pay. Read more on how cash use is trending.
An ATM on site means customers don’t leave to find cash and come back later – or not at all. They withdraw and spend in one visit.
What an ATM on site gives you
- Cash in customers’ hands, inside your venue, where they spend it
- Fewer card sales, and fewer merchant fees on those sales
- Contactless, tap-to-withdraw touchscreen ATMs
- Your brand on screen, with on-screen advertising available
- Managed for you: Dash handles cash logistics, reconciliation and servicing, with everything visible in the Dash web portal
- For qualifying businesses, our deposit-taking ATM lets you bank takings on site with same-day settlement, subject to approval
Find out more about getting an ATM for your business or buying an ATM.
Merchant fees FAQ
Why hasn’t my cost of accepting cards dropped since the surcharge ban?
The RBA cut the wholesale interchange caps, but that saving only reaches you automatically on interchange-linked pricing. On a flat-rate plan, it only reaches you if your provider cut the rate, and many haven’t. Compare your September and October statements.
Can I offer a discount to customers who pay with cash?
The ban stops card surcharges, not cash discounts, and a number of businesses now offer one. Talk to your accountant or adviser about how to display it and record it.
Does the surcharge ban affect ATM fees?
No. The ATM fee shown on screen when a customer withdraws cash is separate from card surcharging and was not changed by the ban.
How does an ATM on site reduce my merchant fees?
Every sale paid with cash is a sale you don’t pay a merchant fee on. An ATM inside your venue makes it easy for customers to pay that way.
Dash ATM has built and managed ATM networks across Australia since 2012, led by founder Paul Wrigley, in the ATM industry since 2002. Keep cash local.
Sources: RBA Surcharging FAQs (March 2026); RBA Review of Retail Payments Regulation, Conclusions Paper (March 2026); Australian Banking Association, Surcharging (October 2026); Merchant Compare (2 October 2026); Payments Industry Insights (19 October 2026); RBA Retail Payments Statistics (August 2026); RBA Bulletin, Cash use in Australia (April 2026). This article is general information, not financial or legal advice.
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