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Beyond the headline transaction rate, merchant statements often carry fees that are easy to miss: terminal rental, minimum monthly service fees, PCI compliance charges, statement or account fees, and chargeback fees. Flat or tiered pricing can also obscure how much each card type really costs by folding everything into bands. From 1 April 2027, extra statement-transparency measures are due to take effect to make these costs clearer.
Last updated: 30 June 2026
The percentage you were quoted is rarely the full cost. Statements commonly carry a terminal rental or hire fee for the hardware, a minimum monthly service fee that applies when your volume is low, PCI compliance or security charges, and account or statement fees. Chargeback and dispute fees can appear when a transaction is contested. Individually small, these line items add up — and they don’t show in the advertised transaction rate at all.
The pricing structure itself can be the disguise. Flat-rate pricing folds cheap and expensive cards into one number, so you can’t see where the cost actually sits. Tiered or bundled pricing sorts transactions into rate bands with rules that aren’t always obvious, meaning a card you expect at the low band quietly qualifies for a higher one. Neither is dishonest by nature, but both can make it hard to know your true cost without calculating cost of acceptance from the raw figures.
Transparency is set to improve. As part of the RBA’s 2026 package, extra statement-transparency measures are due to take effect from 1 April 2027 alongside foreign-card interchange caps. Until then, the practical defence is to read every line, total all card-related charges, and divide by your card turnover to get your real cost of acceptance rather than trusting the headline rate. This is general information, not financial advice, and any figures are indicative.
Source: RBA Review of Merchant Card Payment Costs and Surcharging — Conclusions Paper (March 2026).
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