How much will the surcharge ban save businesses?

The headline numbers

The RBA puts indicative figures on the reform. It estimates around $910 million a year in savings flowing from the interchange cuts, and up to $1.8 billion a year once you account for the full package of measures — the surcharge change, interchange caps and transparency reforms together. These are system-wide estimates from the Conclusions Paper, describing the benefit across the whole economy rather than a per-business amount.

Caveat one: the MSF isn’t capped

It’s important to read the numbers carefully. What’s being cut is interchange — one component of the Merchant Service Fee (MSF) you actually pay. The MSF itself is not capped. So even with interchange falling (consumer credit from 0.80% to 0.30%, domestic debit and prepaid from 10c-or-0.20% to 8c-or-0.16%), the headline rate your provider charges you isn’t directly regulated down by these measures.

Caveat two: pass-through isn’t guaranteed

The second caveat is just as important. An interchange saving only reaches your business if your provider passes it through to your pricing. If they don’t, the saving stays upstream. There’s also a twist for some businesses: commercial and business-card interchange is retained at current levels and the 0.50% benchmark is abolished, which means business-card costs could actually rise rather than fall.

How to capture your share

Because the savings aren’t automatic, the practical question is how much reaches you — and that comes back to your rate. Comparing your effective MSF against indicative benchmarks (flat in-person averages around 1.37%, online around 1.78%, small-business effective rates commonly 1.1%–2.5%) and asking your provider directly about pass-through and least-cost routing is how a system-wide saving turns into a real one for your business. These figures are indicative and this is general information, not advice.

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