Australia's Card Surcharge Ban: What to Change Before 1 October 2026

Card payment surcharges are banned in Australia from 1 October 2026. The Reserve Bank of Australia confirmed the date on 31 March 2026 and it has not moved.

The short version

From 1 October you cannot add a card surcharge to a customer's bill, whatever you call it. That now includes American Express, which was outside the RBA's own standards and is inside the ban anyway.

A booking fee charged on every booking regardless of how the customer pays is not a surcharge. It is not banned and you can still pass it on.

So: if you currently add card costs as a separate line at checkout, that line has to go before 1 October. If your prices already include the cost, nothing changes for you. Three compliant options are below, and Petboost's Build Fees Into Pricing wizard applies whichever one you pick across every service in one pass.

What the RBA Announced

The Payments System Board published its Conclusions Paper confirming that surcharging on debit, prepaid, and credit cards will end across the eftpos, Mastercard, and Visa networks.

The ban covers all card types on these networks.

American Express needs its own sentence, because the answer changed after the Conclusions Paper. Amex is not regulated by the RBA in the same way, so it does not appear in the RBA's standards. The ACCC's current guidance nonetheless lists American Express alongside Visa, Mastercard and eftpos as covered from 1 October, through Amex's own scheme rules and merchant contracts. Treat Amex as in. Surcharging it after 1 October puts you in breach of your merchant agreement.

Mobile wallets and buy-now-pay-later services sit outside the ban; the RBA said it would consult on those separately. Cash, BPAY, PayPal, Diners Club and taxi fares are also outside it.

The PSB determined that surcharging was "no longer achieving its intended purpose of steering consumers towards more efficient payment choices." Consumer research showed 76% of Australians want surcharging stopped.

The Key Distinction: Card Surcharge vs Booking Fee

This is the most important thing to understand, and it is good news for Petboost businesses.

The ban targets payment processing surcharges -- fees that exist because a customer is paying by card. It does not target platform fees, service fees, or booking fees that apply regardless of how the customer pays.

What is a surcharge?

The RBA defines a payment surcharge as:

"A fee paid by customers, in addition to the price of a good or service, allowing merchants to pass on the cost of the customer's chosen payment method."

The ACCC is explicit: "A business can't escape the ban by calling a card payment surcharge something else." A fee that only applies when a customer pays by card is a surcharge, regardless of what you label it.

Two very different fees

Current rates for both are on the pricing page. They are deliberately not written into this post: they are two different fees charged by two different companies, and a figure typed into a guide goes stale the first time either one moves.

The Petboost booking fee applies to all bookings processed through the platform. It is not conditional on the payment method. It covers scheduling, online booking, automated reminders, CRM, and payment orchestration. It is a genuine platform service fee, and it remains fully compliant under the new rules.

What Does NOT Change

Petboost's pricing model is unchanged. We are not changing our fee structure, our plan pricing, or how the booking fee works.

What changes is how businesses choose to absorb or pass on costs -- specifically, the Stripe card processing component.

Here is what stays exactly the same:

• The Petboost booking fee and how it works. Unchanged
• Plan pricing and thresholds. Unchanged
• Feature access. Unchanged
• The ability to pass on the Petboost booking fee. Unchanged
• Stripe still charges you its own processing fee. The ban does not touch what Stripe charges you; it stops you billing that cost to the customer as a separate line

One thing that does change on the same day, in your favour and for a separate reason: Stripe is cutting its Australian card rates from 1 October 2026 as the RBA's interchange caps come down. It lands in your own Stripe account, and it does not offset the surcharge you can no longer charge. The numbers are in Stripe's rate cut, and how it now compares to Square.

What Changes for Your Business

From 1 October 2026, you will not be able to add a separate "card fee" or "card processing fee" as a line item on customer invoices.

Don't:

• Add Stripe's processing fee as a separate "card fee" on invoices
• Charge different fees depending on whether a customer pays by card or cash
• Relabel a card processing fee as a "service fee" and apply it only to card payments

Do:

• Pass on the Petboost booking fee. It is a platform fee, not a card surcharge
• Adjust your base pricing to absorb card processing costs (e.g. increase a $80 groom to $82)
• Use a single booking fee that covers both platform and payment handling costs
• Offer cash discounts -- discounts for specific payment methods remain explicitly permitted

Three Compliant Options

Most pet businesses will land on one of these approaches:

Option A: Build it into your prices

The simplest approach. Adjust your service prices by roughly 2% to absorb the card processing cost. An $80 groom becomes $82. An $120 full groom becomes $122. No separate fee line items at all.

This is actually what the RBA is encouraging. The customer sees one price, pays one price. Clean and simple.

Option B: Single blended booking fee

Instead of splitting the booking fee and card fee into separate line items, use a single blended "booking fee" that covers everything. Work the level out from the two current rates, which are on the pricing page and in your Stripe dashboard, rather than from a number in a guide.

As long as this fee applies to all bookings regardless of payment method, it is compliant. It is not a card surcharge, it is a booking fee.

Option C: Keep the Petboost booking fee, absorb Stripe

Keep passing on the Petboost booking fee as a line item. Absorb Stripe's card processing cost into your base pricing. This means a small price increase on your services but keeps your fee structure simple.

What to do in Petboost

Petboost businesses were notified in July and the tooling is live. Fee labelling inside Petboost is compliant with the new rules.

If you have not made the change yet, it is one pass through the wizard: Services, then Pricing Assistant, then Build Fees Into Pricing. It takes your card processing fee and your Petboost booking fee separately rather than as one blended number, shows you the before and after on every service, lets you set the rounding, and applies the lot in one go. Configure, preview, review, apply.

If you are not sure whether you currently surcharge, look at a recent invoice. A line that only appears when the customer paid by card is the line that has to go.

The Regulatory Detail

For those who want the full picture, here is how the ban actually works:

The RBA is varying its existing Standards (made under the Payment Systems (Regulation) Act 1998) to lift its current prohibition on no-surcharge rules. This allows Visa, Mastercard, and eftpos to reinstate their own no-surcharge rules, which prevent merchants from surcharging.

The enforcement backstop is section 55B of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010, which makes any surcharge exceeding the "permitted surcharge" in RBA Standards an offence. Once the permitted surcharge is zero, any card surcharge at all becomes excessive.

In practice the first enforcement you will meet is your own merchant agreement: the ACCC's guidance notes the rules are enforced by the card networks through their scheme rules and merchant contracts. Section 55B sits behind that. Either way the answer for a pet business is the same, which is to stop billing the card cost as its own line.

No exceptions were granted. The PSB explicitly rejected carve-outs for small merchants, commercial cards, and foreign transactions: "simplicity and ease of enforcement for consumers, merchants, payments service providers and the ACCC outweigh the potential benefits of exceptions."

Timeline

The Bottom Line

This is a significant regulatory change for Australian businesses, but for Petboost businesses specifically, the impact is manageable:

1. Petboost's pricing does not change. Our booking fee is a platform fee, not a card surcharge.
2. You can still pass on the Petboost booking fee. It applies to all bookings regardless of payment method.
3. Card processing costs move into your prices or into a single payment-method-neutral booking fee.
4. American Express counts. It is not in the RBA's standards but the ACCC lists it as covered from the same date.
5. The deadline is 1 October 2026. Services, then Pricing Assistant, then Build Fees Into Pricing.
6. Every pet business platform is affected equally. This is not unique to Petboost.

If you want a hand with the pricing pass, talk to our support team before the end of the month.

Further Reading

• RBA Conclusions Paper (March 2026)
• RBA Media Release MR-26-10
• ACCC Card Surcharges Guidance
• Petboost Pricing