Merchant Fees in Australia From October 2026: What You Should Pay

In Australia, a merchant facility is what most people outside the country call a merchant account: the service that lets you take card payments and settles the money to your bank account. The main charge is the merchant service fee, usually a percentage of each sale. It has three parts:

• Interchange: paid by your acquirer (the bank or company that processes your card sales) to the bank that issued your customer's card. The RBA caps it for eftpos, Mastercard and Visa.
• Scheme fees: charged by the card networks (eftpos, Mastercard, Visa) for using their network. These aren't capped.
• The provider's margin: what your acquirer or provider keeps. This is the part you can negotiate.

The RBA calls interchange and scheme fees together the "wholesale" cost. On top of the merchant service fee, many facilities charge monthly and one-off fees, covered in fees to question below.

These are final decisions of the RBA's Payment Systems Board, published in its Conclusions Paper on 31 March 2026. They cover cards on the eftpos, Mastercard and Visa networks used at businesses in Australia. A cap limits any single interchange rate. A benchmark limits the network's weighted average across all its rates.

What that means on a sale: from 1 October 2026, interchange on a $100 purchase with an Australian consumer credit card can't be more than 30 cents. Before, it could be up to 80 cents.

Foreign cards are where fees are highest today. The RBA reports that merchant service fees on foreign-issued Visa and Mastercard credit cards "has been between 2.6 and 2.75 per cent" (Conclusions Paper, footnote 45, corrected 19 June 2026). If you sell overseas, our guide to international card payments for Australian businesses covers what the 2027 cap changes.

American Express isn't one of the networks the RBA caps, so these limits don't apply to Amex cards. The RBA's 2026 review of payments regulation, which started with issues papers in June 2026, is looking at networks like Amex. There's no outcome yet.

Australian providers sell two main kinds of plan:

• Single rate (blended): one percentage on every card, whatever it costs the provider. Easy to predict.
• Unblended: you pay each sale's actual interchange and scheme fees, plus the provider's margin, itemised. The RBA's glossary says these are "also called 'interchange plus' or 'interchange plus plus' plans".

The RBA's data in the Conclusions Paper (section 6.1) shows the gap:

Yet only 19% of small merchants are on unblended plans. The RBA notes these plans "are not typically advertised", so many owners don't know to ask.

The plan type also decides what happens on 1 October 2026. On an unblended plan, lower interchange shows up on your next statement, because you pay the actual interchange on each sale. On a single rate, your rate only falls if your provider chooses to lower it. Some already have; others may not. For how interchange-plus works and what a fair margin looks like, see our guide to interchange-plus pricing.

These single rates come from each provider's own Australian pricing page or announcement, as published in September 2026. They're a benchmark to hold a quote against. They're not START's prices and not a recommendation. Rates are changing around 1 October, so check the provider before you rely on any of them.

Put a single rate of 1.4% to 2.2% next to a 0.3% cap on credit interchange and you can see how much of each rate is margin and scheme fees. Some quotes include GST and some don't, so check before you compare.

Around 90% of Australian debit cards are dual-network cards, according to the RBA: eftpos plus Visa Debit or Debit Mastercard on the same card. Either network can process the sale. Least-cost routing (LCR) lets you send those sales through the network that costs you less, which the RBA says is eftpos on average.

As of September 2026, here's where LCR stands:

• No mandate. In March 2026 the RBA kept its existing approach: it expects acquirers and payment facilitators to offer and promote LCR for in-person payments with physical cards. It didn't make LCR compulsory.
• In person: the share of merchants with LCR switched on rose from 50% in June 2022 to 84% at the end of 2025 (Conclusions Paper, section 7.1).
• Online: the RBA's June 2026 issues paper, Merchant choice in payments, says online LCR "was available to 97 per cent of merchants as at end December 2025. However, only three out of 11 large providers have reported that LCR for online transactions is turned on for most of their merchants." The RBA is asking whether more regulation is needed. No decision yet.

So ask your provider two questions: is least-cost routing on for my in-person sales, and is it on for my online sales? Get the answer in writing, and check your statement for the split between eftpos and Visa or Mastercard debit. If you're on a single rate, also ask whether LCR changes what you pay at all.

Comparing merchant fees in Australia gets easier over the next six months. Under the RBA's decisions:

The RBA also expects each network to publish a Scheme Fee Roadmap by 1 April 2027. Once the first data is out, you'll be able to see what businesses of your size pay on average and hold your own effective rate against it.

These can cost more over a year than the headline rate. Get the answers in writing.

One number lets you compare any two offers, whatever the plan:

Total fees for the month ÷ total card sales = effective rate

Say a café takes $30,000 in card sales in a month and pays $450 in fees, including terminal rental. Its effective rate is 1.5%, above the RBA's 1.4% average for small merchants on a single rate, and well above the 0.9% average on unblended plans.

1. Take your last three statements and work out the effective rate for each month.
2. Note your mix: how much is debit, credit, Amex, foreign cards, in person and online.
3. Ask each provider to price that same mix, including every monthly fee, and say whether GST is included.
4. Check your effective rate again on your October and November 2026 statements. If the interchange cuts don't show, ask why.

START sets up Australian merchant accounts in AUD, U.S. merchant accounts in USD for businesses selling to American customers, or both. Tell us what you pay now and how you sell, and we'll tell you what your facility should cost. If you're setting up a new facility, our guide to how to get a merchant facility in Australia covers the documents you'll need.

Not as a card surcharge. From 1 October 2026, eftpos, Mastercard and Visa have introduced no-surcharge rules for debit, prepaid and credit cards, and American Express and UnionPay are removing surcharging from the same date (RBA media release, 31 March 2026). The ACCC says you can raise prices or offer a discount for another payment method, as long as the price you display is the full price. For what's allowed and a checklist for your terminals, website and signs, read Australia's card surcharge ban. With the fee now yours to carry, the plan you're on matters more than it did.