Card networks and big acquirers now have to publish their fees. What it means for your EFTPOS rate

What has to be published from 30 October 2026?

Two groups have to publish, and they publish different things.

The card networks publish quarterly totals for interchange fees (the wholesale fee that goes to the cardholder's bank) and for scheme fees and rebates (what the networks charge and give back to banks and acquirers). Each comes with the value and number of transactions it applies to, split into domestic and international cards, debit and credit, in-store and online. Payments made with a phone or watch wallet are listed separately.

Large acquirers publish their average merchant service fee, the total they charge merchants as a percentage of card payments. It's broken down by merchant size, card type, in-store or online, and Australian or overseas cards.

Who counts as a large acquirer?

The RBA defines a large acquirer as one that processed more than $10 billion in eftpos, Mastercard and Visa transactions directly for merchants in the last 12 months. Payments that go through a payment facilitator don't count towards the threshold unless the facilitator is a related company of the acquirer, and businesses that acquire their own transactions are excluded.

The RBA's rules don't name which companies are over the line. Smaller providers don't have to publish, though nothing stops them.

Which merchant size will my business fall into?

Acquirers report separate figures for small and medium merchants. Small means the acquirer processes $1 million or less a year in eftpos, Mastercard and Visa payments for you. Medium is between $1 million and $10 million. If you run several related businesses, the acquirer should add them together when it knows they're related.

A business taking $50,000 a month on cards processes $600,000 a year, so it's a small merchant. That's the row to look at.

When does each part start?

The rules come in stages. These dates are from the RBA's FAQs and the Impact and Implementation chapter of the conclusions paper.

1 October 2026: no-surcharge rules started on eftpos, Mastercard and Visa, and lower interchange caps apply to Australian cards.

30 October 2026: card networks and large acquirers publish their first quarterly fee data, covering 1 July to 30 September 2026. After that, each quarter's data is due within 30 days of the quarter ending.

30 January 2027: large acquirers start publishing how much of the October interchange cut they've passed on to merchants. They publish this for the first four quarters after the cut.

1 April 2027: all acquirers must give merchants more detailed statements, from the first full statement period starting on or after that date.

How do I compare my own statement with the published figures?

Work out your cost of acceptance. The RBA uses that term for the fees your provider charges you to take cards, which bundles interchange, scheme fees and the provider's margin.

Take one full month's statement. Add every fee on it: per-transaction fees, percentage fees, terminal rental, monthly or account fees, and anything labelled admin, compliance or chargeback. Divide the total by your card takings for the month. If you paid $600 in fees on $50,000 of card sales, your effective rate is 1.2%. (That's an illustrative example, not a real business.)

Then find the small or medium merchant row in a large acquirer's published table, in-store, for the card type that makes up most of your sales. If your effective rate sits well above it, ask your provider why. Keep in mind that the published number is an average across many businesses, and it may count only the merchant service fee, so your terminal rental and monthly fees can push your figure higher.

FairPayments publishes its own rates on the rates page: 0.95% on Visa and Mastercard, a flat 25c per eftpos transaction, and Amex optional at 1.65%, for auto, wholesale food and trade supplies businesses.

What should I look for on my statement?

Check how debit and credit are split. Debit cards have much lower interchange caps than credit cards, so if most of your customers pay by debit and you're on a blended rate, check your effective rate against the debit figures, not the overall average.

Look for fees outside the percentage. Per-transaction fees, rental and monthly fees don't show in a headline rate. Include them in your sum.

See whether the October cuts reached you. Interchange caps fell on 1 October 2026. Compare a September statement with a November one. From January 2027 large acquirers will also publish their own pass-through figure.

Check least cost routing. If your debit sales can be routed through eftpos and you're on pricing that splits card types, routing can lower your bill. Our least cost routing guide covers how to check it's on.

What rates do the main providers advertise?

The new RBA data shows averages. Providers' own pricing pages show the rate a new business is offered before any negotiation. These are the in-person rates the main providers advertised on their own websites when we checked on 29 October 2026. Conditions are as stated by each provider, and rates change, so check the provider's page before you decide.

Banks also offer negotiated pricing to businesses that meet their criteria, and a comparison service's advertised rate depends on approval. Your effective rate from your own statement is still the number to compare.

Where can I find the published data?

Each network and large acquirer has to put it on its own website. The RBA has said it will republish the data on its website soon after, which is likely to be the easiest single place to compare. We'll add the link here once the RBA posts it.