The card surcharge ban starts 1 October. What tradies need to do

The Reserve Bank has spent two years reviewing card payment costs and surcharging. Its conclusion, published on 31 March 2026, was that surcharging no longer does what it was meant to do: most businesses that surcharge put the same fee on every card, customers find it hard to avoid and the rules are confusing. So from 1 October 2026 the RBA is lifting the rule that stopped card networks banning surcharges, and eftpos, Mastercard and Visa have each announced no-surcharge rules from that date.

The RBA says the rules will generally apply to all credit, debit and prepaid cards on those networks, including cards issued overseas. American Express, UnionPay and PayPal aren't regulated the same way, but all three have decided to remove surcharging from 1 October too (PayPal's own rule starts on 5 October). In practice, that's every card your customers use.

The rules are enforced by the card networks and your payment provider through your merchant agreement, not by the ACCC. The ACCC still polices misleading pricing, which matters for one of the traps below.

Any surcharge added because the customer paid by card. It doesn't matter whether they tapped a terminal in the driveway, paid the Pay now link on an emailed invoice, or read their card out over the phone. It's the card that triggers it, not where the payment happened.

Trade and commercial customers too. The RBA's FAQ says card payments between businesses aren't exempt unless a network's rules or the law provide one, and none has been announced. If a builder pays your invoice on the company card, no surcharge.

Invoices you've already sent. The RBA's answer is that if a card payment is made on or after 1 October 2026, surcharging may no longer be available even if the invoice was issued earlier. So an invoice that goes out in late September with a 1.5% card fee on it and gets paid on 3 October is a problem. Take the wording off your invoices now rather than on the day.

Most terminal providers are switching the surcharge function off around 1 October. Don't rely on that alone: the wording on your quotes, invoices, website and booking page is yours to fix.

Other fees that have nothing to do with the card. The ACCC is clear that service fees, booking fees, delivery fees, weekend and public holiday surcharges are all still allowed, because they're not charged for paying by a particular card. A call-out fee is still a call-out fee.

Discounts for paying another way. You can still offer a discount for bank transfer, PayID or cash. The catch is how you show it: the displayed price has to be the full price, the discount has to be disclosed before the customer books or pays, and you can't make the discounted price more prominent than the full one. A line on your invoice like 'Pay by bank transfer and take $10 off' is fine. Quoting the discounted price as if it were the price is not.

Your provider's own fees. Terminal rental and processing fees are what your provider charges you for the service. They aren't surcharges and they carry on as normal. Where they go is the interesting part, covered below.

Choosing not to take cards. The RBA's FAQ says businesses can generally decide which payment methods they accept. You can go bank-transfer only if you want to, though on residential work that usually costs you more in slow payments than the card fee did.

The RBA's figures, quoted by the ACCC, put the cost of accepting cards for a small business (under $1 million a year through cards) at 0.85% to 2% for debit and eftpos, and 1% to 2% for credit. On an online payment link the rate is usually flat: Stripe's standard Australian rate, for example, is 1.7% plus 30 cents a transaction, and Stripe has said its domestic rate drops from 1 October.

That's the rate on card payments, not on your whole business. Say you turn over $30,000 a month and 40% of it comes in by card at 1.7% plus 30 cents. That's about $210 a month in card fees, which is 0.7% of everything you invoice. A price rise of well under 1% covers it. Our card surcharge ban calculator does this sum with your own numbers.

The same day the surcharge goes, the RBA is cutting what the card networks can charge underneath. The cap on interchange fees for a personal credit card drops to 0.3% of the payment, and for debit and prepaid to 8 cents plus 0.16%. Those are the fees your provider pays the card issuer, so your provider's costs fall from 1 October. Whether yours do depends on your provider passing it on. Ask them. From 30 October the big providers have to publish their fees, and from January 2027 they have to show how much of the interchange cut they passed through.

Absorb it. If cards are a small share of your takings, the tidiest answer is to treat the fee as a cost of doing business, the same as fuel or your accountant, and change nothing. Most of the country already does: the RBA says 85% of small businesses don't surcharge today.

Build it into your prices. The ACCC's own example is a $60 haircut with a 1% card surcharge that becomes $60.60 flat. For a tradie that's a fraction of a percent on your hourly rate or your markup, once, and it's done. If you're quoting from a rate you set years ago, this is a good excuse to revisit the whole number, not just the card bit.

Discount the other way. Keep your prices where they are and offer a small discount for bank transfer or PayID, shown the right way (see above). This suits businesses where most customers already pay by transfer and cards are the exception.

Trap one: don't rename it. The ACCC says businesses shouldn't try to avoid the no-surcharge rules by describing a card surcharge as another type of fee, and that doing so may be misleading conduct. A 'payment processing fee' or 'admin fee' that only appears when someone pays by card is a surcharge with a different hat on.

Trap two: don't blame a bigger rise on the ban. The ACCC's haircut example goes on: if the salon puts the price up to $65 because energy and labour have gone up as well, it must not tell customers the rise is because of the surcharge changes. Put your prices up if your costs justify it, just be straight about why.

1. Find every place a card surcharge is mentioned. Your terminal, your invoice terms, your quote terms, your website, your booking page, any text or email template, your price list and any sign in the ute or on the counter. It's easy to fix the terminal and forget the invoice footer.

2. Decide which of the three options you're taking, and run the numbers on your own card share, not a guess.

3. Update the wording. Take surcharge lines off quotes and invoices you send from now on, so nothing sent in September is paid with a surcharge in October.

4. Tell your regulars if their prices are moving, before the first higher invoice lands. A one-line heads-up beats a query.

5. On 1 October, check your terminal no longer adds a fee, and that any online payment page doesn't either.

6. In November, read your merchant statement. The interchange cut should show up as a lower rate. If it doesn't, ask your provider why, and shop around. The RBA's FAQ suggests exactly that: review whether you're on the best plan and compare providers.

There's nothing to switch off. ONARA has never added a surcharge to card payments, so the Pay now button on your invoices and the QR code on the PDF keep working exactly as they do today. The card fee is Stripe's standard rate and the money lands in your own account. ONARA takes no cut.

If you're building the fee into your rate, set your hourly rate and materials markup once in Settings and every quote from then on carries it. If you're going the discount route, put the bank transfer discount in your invoice notes so it shows on every invoice, and remember to keep the full price as the price.