Business · Regulation
From 1 October you cannot surcharge a card. If your customers pay on company cards, the offset does not arrive
The Reserve Bank has decided that
card surcharging on both debit and credit cards should end on 1 October 2026
, across
eftpos, Mastercard and Visa. The compensation for merchants is a cut to interchange, the
wholesale fee inside every card transaction. For consumer credit cards that cap
falls to 0.3 per cent. For commercial credit cards it stays at 0.8 per
cent. Trade printers are unusually exposed to that distinction, because a large
share of what they invoice is paid on a business card.
This is a payments story rather than a printing one, which is exactly why it is easy to miss in a trade inbox. It lands on 1 October, it is already decided rather than proposed, and the size of the effect depends on something most print businesses have never had reason to look at: whether the cards their customers present are consumer cards or commercial ones.
What was decided
The RBA's Payments System Board published its Conclusions Paper in March 2026 after a
review that drew over 260 written submissions
. It settled on a package: remove
surcharging, reduce interchange, and increase transparency. The Bank's own framing of the
first is blunt, that surcharging no longer works as intended
and
It has become harder for people to avoid surcharges
.
The reason it matters commercially is that surcharging is how a lot of small businesses
have been recovering card costs. The RBA puts the population at
the 16 per cent of Australian businesses that surcharge
, and says that for those
businesses it is now their decision whether to fold the cost into sticker prices instead.
The interchange caps, which are the compensation
| Policy | Card type | New cap | Effective |
|---|---|---|---|
| Policy 2 | Domestic consumer credit | 0.3 per cent of transaction value | 1 October 2026 |
| Policy 3 | Domestic commercial credit | retained at 0.8 per cent | 1 October 2026 |
| Policy 4 | Domestic debit and prepaid | 8 cents per transaction and 0.16 per cent of value | 1 October 2026 |
| Policy 5 | Foreign-issued cards | 1.0 per cent of transaction value | 1 April 2027 |
Policy 3 is the line to read twice. The commercial credit card cap is
Retaining the interchange cap on domestic-issued commercial credit card transactions
acquired in Australia at 0.8 per cent of transaction value
. It is not being cut. The
weighted-average benchmark is removed from both credit categories, but the headline number
for commercial cards does not move.
Why that lands harder on a trade printer than on a cafe
The RBA's case for the package is that businesses come out roughly even: they lose
surcharge revenue and gain lower interchange. Its summary says the reductions
should help to lower card payment costs for businesses, especially small businesses that
are usually charged the highest costs to accept payments
.
That arithmetic assumes your customers are paying on consumer cards. A commercial printer invoicing other businesses is frequently paid on a company card, and on those transactions the cap is unchanged at 0.8 per cent while the ability to surcharge disappears on 1 October. We are not able to tell you what share of print payments run on commercial cards, because nobody publishes that split by industry, and we are not going to estimate it. But the direction is not in doubt: the more of your takings arrive on business cards, the less of the promised offset you receive.
Our view, on the decisions above: this is a sensible reform with an uneven landing, and business-to-business trades are on the thin side of it. That is an observation about how the policy interacts with a particular customer mix, not a claim that the RBA got it wrong, and the Bank has published its reasoning in full for anyone who wants to argue the other way.
What actually changes on 1 October, and what does not
From the RBA's implementation table: removing surcharging, the amendments to interchange on domestic-issued cards, and the net compensation changes all commence 1 October 2026. The cap on foreign-issued cards and the extra information required on merchant statements do not arrive until 1 April 2027. Acquirers must first publish their interchange pass-through by 30 January 2027, for the quarter beginning 1 October 2026.
So the transparency measures that are supposed to let you check whether your provider has passed the savings on arrive months after the surcharge revenue stops. For the December quarter you are taking it on trust.
What to do before October
Two things are worth doing while there is time. Ask your acquirer, in writing, what your effective rate will be from 1 October on consumer credit, commercial credit and debit separately, because the reform treats them differently and a single blended rate will hide the change. And look at your own mix: if you know what proportion of your card takings come from business customers, you know roughly how much of the offset is actually coming to you.
The Visual Media Association has said it will issue a special advisory on the change to members. We have not seen it, and this article is built on the RBA's published decisions rather than on any industry summary of them.
How we did this
Built from three Reserve Bank of Australia pages published as part of the Review of Merchant Card Payment Costs and Surcharging, all read on 29 August 2026: the media release announcing the Conclusions Paper, the plain-language At a Glance summary, and the Impact and Implementation chapter that carries the policy numbering and the implementation table. Every cap figure, date and quoted phrase is the RBA's own. The lead came from a dated item on the trade title Print21; nothing from that item is relied on here and no figure in this article is sourced to it. We have not contacted the RBA, the Visual Media Association, any card network or any acquirer. We do not know and have not estimated the share of print industry card payments made on commercial cards, and the article says so where it matters. The opinion offered is labelled as ours and rests on the policy text quoted above it.
Sources
- Reserve Bank of Australia, Review of Merchant Card Payment Costs and Surcharging: Conclusions Paper (media release, read 29 August 2026): that the Payments System Board concluded a package removing surcharging, reducing interchange fees and increasing transparency would be in the public interest, and that it applies to the designated eftpos, Mastercard and Visa networks.
- Reserve Bank of Australia, At a Glance: What the Key Conclusions Are and What They Mean for Businesses and Consumers (read 29 August 2026): that surcharging on both debit and credit cards should end on 1 October 2026; that the Review drew over 260 written submissions; the statements that surcharging no longer works as intended and that it has become harder for people to avoid surcharges; that 16 per cent of Australian businesses surcharge; and that the interchange reductions should especially help small businesses.
- Reserve Bank of Australia, Impact and Implementation, Conclusions Paper chapter 8 (read 29 August 2026): Policies 2 to 5 and their cap figures, including the retention of the commercial credit cap at 0.8 per cent; and Table 10, the implementation timeline giving 1 October 2026 for surcharging removal and domestic interchange amendments, 1 April 2027 for foreign-card caps and merchant statement information, and first publication of acquirer interchange pass-through by 30 January 2027.
Run a print business and know what share of your card takings come in on company cards? That is the number this story is missing and nobody publishes it. Tell us, and we will check it and log the outcome here.