Checklist: prepare your business for 1 October 2026

Every business heading into October should have a surcharge ban checklist. From 1 October you can’t surcharge a card payment, full stop — so the question is what you’re going to do about the cost that lands back on you.

Start with the honest one: are you surcharging now, and are you happy to wear it?

If you’ve got a point of sale you like, you’re happy with your bank, you’re happy with your price, and you’re just going to cop the fees and get on with it — fine. No worries. Keep it like it is. That’s a legitimate answer and a lot of businesses will take it.

But for most businesses this is a great opportunity to shop around and see if you can get a better price. You’re about to do a pile of work anyway. You may as well come out the other side paying less.

Here’s the checklist, in the order I’d actually do it.

Before 1 October

1. Work out your effective rate

Do this first. Before you ring anybody, before you touch a single price.

Your effective rate is the only number that matters, because there are so many hidden costs sitting around the transaction fee. The terminal might be charged, it might not be. There’s usually a service fee, a minimum, something for PCI. The advertised rate tells you almost nothing.

So ignore the rate you were quoted and work out what you actually paid:

Total monthly bill ÷ total monthly card sales = your effective rate

Total bill means everything, not just the transaction fees:

• Transaction and processing fees
• Terminal rental or purchase repayments
• Monthly account, service or facility fees
• Minimum monthly charge, if you didn’t hit it
• PCI compliance fees
• Statement, admin and chargeback fees

Grab your merchant statement and do it for the last three months, so you’ve got a running average. One month can be high, one can be low — a quiet month where you didn’t hit the minimum will make your rate look terrible, and a big month will flatter it.

And then — play it to your favour. If one month looks great and the three-month average doesn’t, use the one month. If one month is high and the average is lower, use the average. Ring your bank and tell them your rate’s 1.07 or whatever it is. You’re negotiating, not filing a tax return.

If you don’t know how to pull that number off your statement, talk to a broker. Any decent one will do it for you in ten minutes.

2. Ring your current provider

This is your number one action, and now you’re ringing them with a number in your hand instead of a feeling.

Ask what their best deal is. Ask specifically whether they’re passing on the interchange cuts that land on the same day (more on that below) — because if they’re not, that’s your opening.

Most people never make this call. The ones who do are surprised how often the answer changes.

3. Decide: absorb it, or lift your prices

You can’t do the next step until you’ve answered this one. The short version of my position: your customers were already paying the surcharge, so putting it in the price leaves them roughly where they were. What’s harder to defend is passing it on without first checking you’re not overpaying to accept cards in the first place.

There’s a whole piece on how to work out your number and where to move prices, including why a cafe and a mechanic have completely different problems here.

4. If you’re repricing — it’s every line in the point of sale

If you’re lifting prices, that’s every single product, one by one. It’s a big exercise. There’s no shortcut.

Which is exactly why you should look at your POS while you’re in there. Especially if your terminal is bundled with your point of sale — because I can tell you now, you’re paying a lot more than you would unbundled. If you can separate them, or you’re willing to move point of sale and shop around, you’ll almost certainly get a better deal.

You’re about to spend hours inside that system touching every product you sell. That’s the moment to ask whether it’s the right system, not six months later.

5. Check what it costs you to leave

Before you get excited about someone else’s quote: how long is left on your term, what’s the early termination fee, and does the terminal have to go back?

Find this out before you start shopping, not after you’ve agreed to switch. Bundled POS-and-payments deals are where this bites hardest, and it’s the reason a lot of businesses discover their better deal is fourteen months away.

6. Turn least cost routing on

If you’re not already routing debit to the cheapest network, do that before you decide how far to lift prices. It may cut your cost enough that you lift less — or don’t lift at all.

It costs nothing and it’s the one lever that’s entirely in your control. Here’s what it is and how to check it’s on.

On 1 October

7. Take down every mention of surcharging

This one’s minor but it’s genuinely your job, and it’s the one people will forget.

Stickers on the counter. The line on the menu. The note at your online checkout. The wording on your receipts. Anything on your website. Wherever you’ve mentioned a card surcharge, it has to come down, because you’re not allowed to charge it anymore.

And this applies to big business too, not just the corner shop. I was in Aldi the other day and the signs were still up. Petrol stations, the lot of them — they’ve all got this to do.

8. Your online checkout is your job

Worth separating this out, because it’s the exception to the next item.

If you take payments online or by invoice, the surcharge is usually a setting you control — a plugin in Shopify or WooCommerce, a toggle in your booking system, a surcharge option in Xero or MYOB on invoices, a setting on your payment links. Nobody is switching those off for you.

Go through every channel you take money through and check each one. More on what changes for online payments.

9. The terminal itself — not your job

Most terminals have the surcharge configured in them, and people are bracing for a fiddly job here. Don’t.

It will almost certainly be managed and removed by the bank, centrally. The idea that every merchant in the country configures their own terminal for a regulatory change is impossible — it’ll be a bank-wide push. So you shouldn’t need to do anything.

If you’re on something unusual or self-managed, ring and confirm. Otherwise, leave it alone.

10. Tell your staff

Your front counter will get asked about this on day one, and “I don’t know” is a bad look when the customer has just read about it in the paper.

Give them one line. Something like: the card fee’s gone, it’s a national rule change, prices are what’s on the board.

After 1 October

11. Diary your November statement

Your costs drop on 1 October too. The same reforms cut the interchange caps: consumer credit from 0.8% to 0.3%, debit from 0.2% to 0.16%.

That’s a real reduction in what it costs to accept a card — but it only reaches you if your provider passes it through. Plenty won’t, or not all of it.

So put a note in the calendar for when your November statement lands, run the same effective-rate sum from step one, and compare it to your September number. If it hasn’t moved, you’ve got a reason to ring them back. Here’s what the interchange cuts actually do.

What you can still charge for

Worth saying clearly, because I can see people over-correcting and tearing down things they’re entitled to keep.

The ban is on card surcharges. It is not a ban on charging for things.

If your menu says “10% Sunday surcharge”, that stays. If it says “1.5% card surcharge”, that goes.

The test is simple: does this fee appear only because the customer used a card? If yes, it’s gone. If it applies regardless of how they pay, it stays. And don’t try to rename a card fee into something else — that’ll get closed off, and your customers will notice before the regulator does.

There’s more to this one than fits in a checklist, including where cash discounts sit and the rule that decides whether yours survives — full rundown here.

The short version

1. Work out your effective rate — total bill ÷ card sales, three months.
2. Ring your provider with that number.
3. Decide: absorb or reprice.
4. If repricing, look at your POS while you’re in there.
5. Check your exit costs before you shop.
6. Turn least cost routing on.
7. Remove every surcharge sign, menu line and receipt mention.
8. Switch off surcharging in your online checkout and invoicing.
9. Leave the terminal alone — the bank handles it.
10. Brief your staff.
11. Check your November bill against your September one.

If you want someone to run the effective-rate numbers with you, or to look at both halves of a bundled POS contract, give us a call. That’s the situation where an outside look usually pays for itself.

FAQ

Do I have to reconfigure my EFTPOS terminal before 1 October?

Almost certainly not. Surcharging is configured in the terminal, but it’ll be removed centrally by your bank or provider — expecting every merchant in Australia to do it themselves was never realistic. Your online checkout and invoicing settings are a different story: those are yours to change.

What’s an effective rate and how do I work mine out?

Your total monthly merchant bill divided by your total monthly card sales. Include everything — terminal rental, monthly fees, minimums, PCI, the lot — not just the transaction fees. Do it across three months so one quiet month doesn’t distort it.

Can I still charge a weekend or public holiday surcharge?

Yes. The ban only covers surcharges applied because a customer paid by card. Weekend surcharges, public holiday surcharges, booking fees and service fees are unaffected, because you’d charge them no matter how the customer paid.

Do I have to take my surcharge signs down?

Yes, and that’s on you. Counter stickers, menu lines, website notices, checkout wording and receipt text all have to go, because the fee they describe is no longer legal to charge. It applies to large retailers exactly as it does to small ones.

Will my card processing costs go down on 1 October?

They should. The same reform cuts interchange caps — consumer credit from 0.8% to 0.3%, debit from 0.2% to 0.16%. But whether that reaches you depends on your provider passing it on, so check your November statement against your September one.

I’m locked into a bundled POS and payments contract. What can I do?

Find out what “locked in” actually means — how long is left, what the exit costs, and what’s genuinely bundled versus just sold together. It comes apart more often than people assume, and the answer determines how much leverage you’ve got in the conversation.