RBA Confirmed: Card surcharges will be banned from 1 October 2026 — check you're on the right rate →
No. If a fee only applies when customers pay by card, it is a card surcharge regardless of whether you call it an “admin”, “service” or “handling” fee. The ACCC treats disguised surcharges as drip pricing and potentially misleading conduct, so renaming is not a workaround.
Last updated: 30 June 2026
The test is not what a fee is called — it is what triggers it. If a charge applies only when a customer pays by card, it functions as a card surcharge, whether it is named an “admin fee”, “service fee” or “handling fee”. Renaming it does not move it outside the rule that removes surcharges on eftpos, Mastercard and Visa.
This is more than a technicality. The ACCC treats disguised surcharges as drip pricing — fees revealed late in the process — and as potentially misleading conduct. So relabelling a card surcharge does not just fail to dodge the surcharge rule; it can create a separate consumer-law exposure. There is genuine downside to trying it.
If your goal is to recover card costs, the honest routes are different: build the cost into your normal prices for everyone, or offer a genuine discount for paying by cash or bank transfer. And the cleanest long-term move is to lower the underlying cost — by securing a competitive rate from your provider.
Source: RBA Review of Merchant Card Payment Costs and Surcharging — Conclusions Paper (March 2026).
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