RBA Confirmed: Card surcharges will be banned from 1 October 2026 — check you're on the right rate →
No — for now. Buy-now-pay-later services such as Afterpay and Zip are not among the networks covered by the surcharge removal, which applies to eftpos, Mastercard and Visa. The RBA has flagged a review of BNPL beginning mid-2026, so this is current general information rather than a settled long-term position.
Last updated: 30 June 2026
The surcharge removal that starts on 1 October 2026 names three networks: eftpos, Mastercard and Visa. Buy-now-pay-later providers such as Afterpay and Zip are not on that list, so they are not captured by the removal in the way a Visa or Mastercard card is. As general information, BNPL surcharging is not removed by the 2026 change itself.
The position is explicitly temporary. The RBA has flagged a review beginning mid-2026 that looks at areas it has not yet brought into scope, including BNPL. That means the boundary you see today could move, so it is worth treating any BNPL surcharge as something to revisit rather than set and forget.
Many BNPL providers set their own merchant terms about whether and how you can surcharge their product. Outside the RBA change, your BNPL contract and consumer-law disclosure obligations still apply, so any surcharge should be clearly disclosed and not misleading. Check your BNPL agreement for product-specific surcharge rules.
Source: RBA Review of Merchant Card Payment Costs and Surcharging — Conclusions Paper (March 2026).
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