What happens if I surcharge after October 2026?

How enforcement actually works

This is where a lot of merchants misread the change. The ban isn’t a new criminal offence that the ACCC takes you to court over, and it isn’t (currently) legislation. Instead, the RBA is lifting its ban on the card networks’ “no-surcharge” rules; the networks then impose those rules through their scheme rules and the merchant agreement you have with your acquirer or provider. So the rule that binds you is contractual and scheme-based, not a statute.

The real risk: losing card acceptance

Because the obligation sits in your merchant agreement, the practical consequence of surcharging eftpos, Mastercard or Visa anyway is that your provider can act under that agreement — up to terminating your ability to accept those cards. For most businesses, losing card acceptance is a far bigger problem than the surcharge ever raised. The government has also signalled it could legislate later if surcharging persists, but the immediate lever is your provider relationship.

Don’t try to rename the surcharge

A tempting workaround is to relabel a card surcharge as an “admin”, “service” or “handling” fee. That doesn’t work: if a fee only applies to card payments, it is a surcharge regardless of its name. The ACCC treats disguised surcharges as drip pricing or misleading conduct, so this approach swaps one risk for another. The clean path is to build card costs into your headline prices or compete on your merchant rate instead.

The constructive move

Rather than looking for ways around the ban, the productive response is to lower the cost itself. Interchange caps are falling from 1 October 2026, and least-cost routing can route dual-network debit to the cheaper network — the RBA says LCR can cut debit acceptance cost by around 20%. Reviewing your effective rate is far safer than risking your card acceptance. This is general information, not advice.

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