Effective 1 October 2026 · Australia
The Reserve Bank's ban stops you surcharging eftpos, Mastercard and Visa. It does not reduce what your acquirer charges you. Whatever you have been recovering through surcharging becomes a straight cost to your business from that date — which makes the rate you pay a margin question for the first time.
The reforms
These come out of the Reserve Bank's Review of Retail Payments Regulation. Two of them work in your favour. The first one does not.
You can no longer add a surcharge on eftpos, Mastercard or Visa transactions. American Express, Diners Club, PayPal and buy-now-pay-later sit outside the regulated ban, though some schemes have signalled they will align.
Lower caps apply to Australian-issued cards from the same date, and to foreign-issued cards from 1 April 2027. This reduces one component of what you pay — but only one, and it is not the component most retailers are overpaying on.
Card networks and large acquirers have to publish their fees, and your statements become standardised. For the first time you will be able to see plainly what you are being charged — and compare it against what you could be paying.
Source: Reserve Bank of Australia — Review of Retail Payments Regulation, Conclusions Paper. Confirm your own position with your acquirer.
Two different numbers
This is the part worth being precise about, because the ban only touches one of them.
An amount you add to your customer's bill at the counter to recover your cost of accepting the card. It shows on their receipt, not yours.
Banned from 1 October 2026.
What your acquirer takes out of every card sale before the money reaches your account. It has always been your cost, and nothing about the reforms removes it.
Unchanged. And now unrecoverable.
If you have been surcharging, that fee has effectively been sitting with your customers. From 1 October it sits with you. Nothing about your business got more expensive — you just stopped being able to hand the bill to someone else.
The number
Third-party processors and all-in-one POS providers typically bundle card processing at somewhere around 1.6% and up. Bank-direct EFTPOS on your own merchant facility usually lands nearer 0.4–0.5%. Across a year of card turnover, that difference is the whole argument.
| Annual card turnover | At 1.6% | At 0.5% | Difference per year |
|---|---|---|---|
| $1,000,000 | $16,000 | $5,000 | $11,000 |
| $3,000,000 | $48,000 | $15,000 | $33,000 |
| $5,000,000 | $80,000 | $25,000 | $55,000 |
Your actual rates will differ — this is the shape of the gap, not a quote. The point is that from 1 October the right-hand column stops being a pricing detail and starts being profit.
What you can actually do
Most retailers paying well over 1% are paying it because their point of sale is tied to a payment product. The card money is routed through the POS vendor's processing arrangement, and the bundled rate is what funds it.
Mainstack builds the systems — point of sale, online store, inventory, accounting sync. We are not a payment provider, an acquirer or a reseller of one. We do not sit in your payment flow and we take no share of what you pay to accept cards.
That is why bank-direct is the design rather than a compromise: when your terminal runs on your own bank's facility, the entire difference between 1.6% and your bank's rate stays with you. We are paid to build and support the system, and that is the only thing we are paid for.
Between now and then
01
Not the headline rate — the effective rate across a full month, including every fixed fee, terminal rental and scheme charge. Divide total fees by total card turnover. Most retailers are surprised.
02
Surcharge logic usually lives in the point of sale, the terminal configuration and the online checkout — three places, not one. All of them need to be correct on 1 October, including any saved payment or subscription flows.
03
If the fee is coming out of your margin, you either wear it or you move your prices. Making that call properly needs current margin data by product — which is a systems question before it is a pricing one.
Common questions
1 October 2026. From that date businesses can no longer add a surcharge to payments made with eftpos, Mastercard or Visa. The Reserve Bank is also lowering interchange caps and introducing fee-disclosure requirements from the same date.
No. The surcharge is the amount you add to your customer's bill. The merchant service fee is what your acquirer charges you, and that continues exactly as before. The ban removes your ability to pass the fee on, so from 1 October it comes out of your margin instead.
It depends on your card turnover and your rate. A retailer processing $3,000,000 a year on cards pays about $48,000 at a 1.6% third-party rate, against roughly $15,000 at a bank-direct rate near 0.5%. Until now that gap could be recovered through surcharging. From 1 October it cannot.
Process bank-direct. Instead of routing card payments through a third-party processor that charges a bundled rate, connect your point of sale to a Linkly-compatible EFTPOS terminal on your own bank's merchant facility, so you pay your bank's rates. The new fee-disclosure rules starting 1 October also make it easier to compare what you are being charged today.
The Reserve Bank's ban covers eftpos, Mastercard and Visa. American Express, Diners Club, PayPal and buy-now-pay-later services sit outside that regulated ban, though some schemes have said they intend to align voluntarily. Check the current position with your acquirer before you rely on it.
Send us a recent merchant statement and tell us what you run at the counter. We will work out your real effective rate, what a bank-direct setup would look like, and what it would save you across a year — with your numbers, not estimates. Built in Perth, supported from Perth.
Book a 30-min consultOr see how Mainstack POS handles bank-direct EFTPOS.