From 1 October 2026, businesses can no longer add a surcharge to eftpos, Mastercard or Visa payments — debit, prepaid or credit. The Reserve Bank’s retail payments overhaul also cuts interchange fees, dropping the consumer credit card cap from 0.8% to 0.3% and debit from 0.2% to 0.16%. The RBA reckons it’ll save businesses around $200 million a year in surcharge fees. But there’s a catch for any venue that has been passing card costs straight to the customer.

For cafés, bars and restaurants, that surcharge line was never really “free money” — it was cost recovery. Once it’s gone, the merchant fee on every tap lands on your margin instead. And as new Global Payments data shows, cards still account for 64% of in-store spend in Australia, so this is no rounding error. In the venues we look after across Sydney’s Northern Beaches, the pattern is consistent: most are on flat “blended” plans that quietly bundle the surcharge, and hardly any have least-cost routing switched on — the setting that sends contactless debit down the cheapest network.

So before 1 October, do three things. Ask your provider for a plan that reflects the new, lower interchange caps rather than last year’s pricing. Get least-cost routing turned on for tap-to-pay debit — on a café’s transaction mix it can trim real money off every trading day. And check your POS and payment terminal are configured to drop the surcharge cleanly, so you’re not accidentally breaking the new rules on day one.

If you’d rather someone else read the fine print, that’s our job. Our hospitality IT team can review your POS, terminals and merchant setup ahead of the deadline — get in touch and we’ll take a look.