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During the past 18 months, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has been reviewing the cost of card payments in Australia, including the fees businesses pay to accept cards and the surcharges customers see at checkout. With more Australians paying by card than ever before, surcharging has become a growing topic of public debate. On 31 March 2026, the RBA announced changes to the rules around card surcharging. Here’s what you need to know and what it could mean for your business.
What happened?
On 31 March 2026, the RBA published the conclusions of its review of card payment costs and surcharging. The headline outcome: from 1 October 2026, businesses will no longer be able to add a surcharge when a customer pays by card.
The change works less directly than you might expect. The RBA doesn’t regulate businesses, it regulates the card networks and the banks. What it has done is remove a rule that previously stopped the card networks from banning surcharges themselves. eftpos, Mastercard and Visa have each since confirmed they’ll introduce “no-surcharge” rules from 1 October 2026. American Express, which isn’t regulated by the RBA in the same way, has decided to do the same.
In practice that means the rule reaches your business through your payment provider’s terms, not from the RBA directly. If you have questions about how it applies to your setup, your provider is the place to ask. At the same time, the RBA is cutting interchange fees, the largest wholesale component of what businesses pay to accept cards.
Until 1 October 2026, the current rules still apply: you can surcharge, but no more than what accepting that card costs you.
How can the RBA do this? Do these changes require legislation to implement?
The RBA is Australia’s payments system regulator. Businesses have been able to surcharge card payments because the RBA made it possible more than 20 years ago, by prohibiting the card networks from imposing “no-surcharge” rules. With card payments now near-universal and cash use declining, the RBA concluded that surcharging is no longer achieving its original purpose. So it removed that prohibition, which frees the networks to set their own no-surcharge rules, and they have. The change was made by varying an existing RBA standard and didn’t require new legislation.
What does this mean for my business?
If you don’t currently surcharge customers, there’s no change for you.
If you do apply a card surcharge today, this will no longer be permitted from 1 October 2026.
What happens next?
If you don’t surcharge, there’s nothing you need to do.
If you do surcharge, there are a few things worth doing before then: decide whether to absorb the cost or build it into your prices, update your menus, signage and website, and talk to us about turning surcharging off in your POS.
We’ve set out the detail of what you can still charge for, what’s exempt, and a checklist in credit card surcharges in Australia: what changes on 1 October 2026.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I still surcharge?
You can continue to pass on a card surcharge until 1 October 2026, provided it does not exceed your cost of card acceptance. For Square sellers, that means no more than your card processing fee.
Does this affect weekend and public holiday surcharges?
No. The RBA changes apply only to processing card payments. Weekend and public holiday surcharging is not affected.
What is Square doing about this?
We are engaging closely with the RBA and reviewing the detail as it is released. We will keep you updated and ensure sellers are well supported ahead of any changes.
