What’s the cheapest way to accept card payments in Australia?

Why there’s no single answer

The cheapest way to accept cards is genuinely individual. A café with a flood of small debit taps optimises very differently from a tradesperson invoicing large credit-card jobs, or an online store taking card-not-present payments. Card mix, average ticket size and channel all push the answer around, which is why a setup that’s cheap for one business can be poor value for another. The right move is to find your own levers, not chase someone else’s rate.

The levers that actually move cost

A few actions reliably help. First, compare your real cost of acceptance — total card fees divided by total card turnover — instead of trusting headline rates. Second, favour transparent interchange-plus pricing, which exposes the interchange layer and lets any 2026 cut flow through more directly. Third, enable least-cost routing on debit: with around 85% of AU debit cards dual-network, the RBA estimates it can cut debit acceptance cost by roughly 20%. Fourth, watch the fixed charges — terminal rental and minimum monthly fees can quietly outweigh a good headline rate on low volume.

How 2026 plays in

The 2026 changes nudge a few of these levers harder. Lower interchange caps from 1 October 2026 mean a transparent pricing model is more likely to let savings reach you, though only if your provider passes them through. With surcharging on eftpos, Mastercard and Visa restricted from that date, the merchant fee on covered cards sits with your business — so trimming the underlying cost matters more than before. We can’t guarantee any saving, and all figures here are indicative; this is general information, not advice.

Source: RBA Review of Merchant Card Payment Costs and Surcharging — Conclusions Paper (March 2026).