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As a rough guide, indicative Australian averages sit around 1.37% for in-person payments and 1.78% online, with small-business effective rates commonly landing between 1.1% and 2.5%. Whether a rate is genuinely “good” for you depends on your card mix, average ticket size and channel, so the benchmarks are a starting point rather than a target. This is general information and we cannot guarantee savings.
Last updated: 30 June 2026
A useful starting point is the set of indicative Australian averages: roughly 1.37% for in-person card payments and around 1.78% online, while small-business effective rates commonly fall between 1.1% and 2.5%. Treat these as indicative reference points, not guarantees — a café taking mostly low-value debit taps has a very different cost profile from an online store taking high-value international credit cards. If your effective rate sits noticeably above the upper end of those ranges for your channel, it is worth understanding why.
The same headline percentage can be a good deal for one business and a poor one for another. The main drivers are your card mix (debit is generally cheaper to accept than credit, and domestic cheaper than international), your average ticket size (fixed per-transaction components hurt small tickets more), and your channel (online and card-not-present is typically dearer than in-person). For debit-heavy businesses, whether least-cost routing is enabled can also move the number meaningfully.
Flat-rate pricing charges one percentage across all card types — simple and predictable, but you may overpay on cheap cards to subsidise the expensive ones. Interchange-plus charges interchange plus a fixed, visible margin, so your rate moves with your actual card mix and the margin is easy to compare. Tiered or bundled pricing groups transactions into rate bands, which can obscure what you are really paying. We describe these neutrally and do not attribute specific rates to named providers; the right model depends on your mix, and comparing offers is the practical way to judge a good rate.
Source: RBA Review of Merchant Card Payment Costs and Surcharging — Conclusions Paper (March 2026).
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