Can my business still charge a card surcharge after 1 October 2026 — and what does it mean for GST?

If you run a café, a restaurant or a shop, there may be a setting on your EFTPOS terminal right now that adds a percentage when a customer taps a card. From this Thursday that line has to go for most cards. Plenty of owners have heard 'surcharges are banned' and are now asking the practical questions: does it cover everything, can I still charge a Sunday surcharge, and does any of this change my GST?

The ban itself is not tax law — it comes from the Reserve Bank and the card networks — but it lands squarely in your pricing, your point-of-sale system and your BAS, so it's worth getting straight.

What changes on 1 October 2026

On 31 March 2026 the Reserve Bank of Australia published the conclusions of its review of merchant card payment costs and surcharging. It decided to end its prohibition on 'no-surcharge' rules from 1 October 2026, which allows the card networks to ban surcharges. According to the RBA's FAQs (as at September 2026), eftpos, Mastercard and Visa have each decided to introduce no-surcharge rules from that date, covering credit, debit and prepaid cards, including cards issued overseas. American Express and UnionPay have also decided to remove surcharging from 1 October 2026, and PayPal from 5 October 2026.

The RBA doesn't regulate merchants directly: the rule reaches you through your payment provider's terms. Most large providers have told the RBA they intend to switch off the surcharging function on their terminals by 1 October. The RBA says businesses are not exempt unless a card network's rules or a law provides an exemption, and business-to-business card payments are not automatically excluded either.

What is not caught

The RBA is specific: the change applies only to an extra amount charged because the customer pays by card. It does not apply to weekend surcharges, public holiday surcharges, booking fees or service fees. You can also still offer a discount for paying another way, and you can choose which payment methods you accept, subject to the ACCC's rules on price displays and the few businesses that must accept cash. Taxi fare surcharges stay with state and territory regulators.

The practical upshot is that the cost of accepting cards doesn't disappear — it moves into your menu or shelf prices. The RBA's own FAQ says exactly that: those costs can be reflected in a business's overall pricing rather than charged as a separate surcharge.

The GST side: nothing new, but check your systems

Some owners assume surcharges sat outside GST, so building them into prices creates new GST. It doesn't. Under the ATO's public ruling GSTR 2014/2, a credit or debit card surcharge already forms part of the consideration for the goods or services you sold. It takes the GST treatment of whatever was sold: taxable, GST-free or input taxed. The ruling's own example is a $55 shirt with a 3% card surcharge of $1.65 — the price becomes $56.65, and the GST is one-eleventh of that, $5.15.

So if a taxable sale went through at $56.65 with a surcharge, and now goes through at $56.65 as a single price, the GST is the same. What changes is the mix. If you sell GST-free items — basic food, for example — any card cost you fold into those prices stays GST-free; if you now offer a discount for cash or another method, GST is worked out on the lower amount actually paid.

Where it goes wrong is bookkeeping. Many point-of-sale and accounting setups post surcharges to a separate income account. After 1 October that account should be empty for card sales; if amounts keep appearing, either your terminal wasn't updated or someone is still adding them manually. And if you invoice customers, the RBA notes that a card payment made on or after 1 October may not be surcharged even if the invoice was issued earlier — so check that invoice templates and online payment links no longer add a card fee.

Two common mistakes

The first is renaming the card surcharge as a 'service fee' and keeping it only for card payments. The RBA's exclusion is for genuine service, booking and weekend fees — an amount triggered by the customer choosing to pay by card is still a card surcharge, whatever it's called on the receipt.

The second is raising prices without looking at the fees you actually pay. The RBA's reforms also cut some wholesale card costs from 1 October, card networks and large acquirers must start publishing their fees from 30 October 2026, and from 1 April 2027 acquirers must give merchants more detailed statements. Your merchant fees remain an ordinary business expense to record, and those statements are the evidence for both your deductions and your pricing decisions.

What a typical small business can do this week

Confirm with your payment provider when surcharging is switched off on your terminals and online checkout; update menus, price boards and invoice templates; make sure the surcharge income line in your accounting file stops being used from 1 October; and, before re-pricing, pull your last few merchant statements to see what card acceptance actually costs you.

This is general information about the RBA's reforms and the ATO's GST rules as at September 2026, not advice about your business. How you price and record card costs depends on what you sell and how your systems are set up.

Our business accounting service covers BAS preparation and GST coding for cafés, restaurants and retailers, and our income tax calculator shows where a year's business profit lands once it sits on top of any other income. For related reading, see our piece on the GST simplified accounting method for restaurants, cafés and caterers from 1 October 2026.