Stripe Is Cutting Its Australian Card Rates: The New Maths vs Square

Stripe has told Australian account holders it is lowering its card processing rates. Two dates, four rate changes, and one new line item you should make a decision about before January.

If you take payments through Petboost, this lands directly in your own account. Petboost connects to the Stripe account in your name, so Stripe bills you at its published Australian prices and any cut flows straight through to you. There is nothing for us to pass on and nothing for you to claim.

Here is exactly what changes, what it is worth on real pet business numbers, and how it compares to Square now that the gap has moved.

What Stripe is changing

The same rates apply to Link. Currency conversion, where it is required, is unchanged at an additional 2%.

The reason is regulatory. The Reserve Bank of Australia is reducing the caps on interchange fees that card issuers can charge, and Stripe is passing those savings through. Both dates line up with the RBA's own timetable from its March 2026 Conclusions Paper: 1 October 2026 is the same day the card surcharge ban takes effect, and 1 April 2027 is when the foreign card interchange caps and transparency requirements begin.

The domestic cut is small, and we should say so

Five hundredths of a percentage point is not a headline. On A$11,400 a month of card volume it is A$5.70 a month, or about A$68 a year.

Worth having. Not worth a press release. The two things in this announcement that actually move money for a pet business are the international cut and the new Radar fee, and the Radar fee is the one you have to make a decision about.

The international cut is the real one

Seven tenths of a percentage point off international cards is a genuine change, and it is the largest of the four.

It only matters if overseas cards are a real share of your takings. Boarding kennels near airports, daycares in tourist suburbs, groomers with a strong expat client base and anyone taking deposits from overseas holiday bookings will notice it. A business putting A$2,000 a month through international cards saves A$14 a month, or about A$168 a year. If you have no idea what your international card share is, your Stripe Dashboard will tell you, and it is worth two minutes to look.

Now the Square comparison

Square Australia's published rates, verified on squareup.com/au/en/payments/our-fees on 30 July 2026:

• 1.6% in person, tapped or inserted, no fixed per-transaction fee
• 2.2% card-not-present, which covers manually keyed cards, cards on file, Square Online, invoices paid online and Virtual Terminal
• A$0 monthly fee, no lock-in

Square publishes no fixed cents component. Stripe has one. That single structural difference is what decides every comparison below, because a fixed fee hurts small tickets and disappears on large ones.

All figures are rounded to the nearest cent, and use Stripe's new rates from 1 October 2026.

In person: Square is still ahead, by cents

Square wins this column at every ticket size, and it will keep winning it. Be clear-eyed about the size of the win though: on a full week of forty A$80 grooms, taking every one of them in person, Square saves you about A$5.60. Call it A$290 a year.

That is the whole in-person cost advantage. It is real, and it is roughly one groom a year.

If you have been on Square since before 30 May 2024, check your rate

This is the part worth acting on. Square's help centre states that the 1.6% card-present rate applies to sellers who signed up on or after 30 May 2024, and that earlier sellers pay 1.9% when using a Square Reader, Square Stand or Tap to Pay (Square Support, verified 30 July 2026).

If you are an established Australian business still on the legacy 1.9%, the comparison inverts:

On the legacy rate, Stripe's new in-person price is cheaper on anything above about A$40. Log into your Square Dashboard and confirm which rate you are actually on before you assume your terminal is the cheap option.

Card on file and online: Stripe crosses over at about A$54.55

Here is where the cut changes the answer.

Square charges 2.2% flat. Stripe charges 1.65% + A$0.30. The crossover is where the extra 0.55% Square charges equals Stripe's 30 cents, which is A$54.55. Below it, Square is cheaper. Above it, Stripe is, and the gap widens with every dollar.

That crossover used to sit at A$60.00. The cut moves it down to A$54.55, which pulls another slice of ordinary pet business tickets onto the Stripe side of the line.

Almost nothing a pet business charges sits under A$54.55. A single nail trim might. A groom, a daycare day, a boarding stay, a package, a course, a membership cycle: all of them clear it comfortably.

Put it on a year. A business taking 120 card-on-file payments a month at an average of A$95, so A$11,400 a month:

• Stripe from 1 October 2026: A$188.10 in percentage plus A$36.00 in fixed fees, so A$224.10 a month
• Square card-not-present: A$250.80 a month

That is A$26.70 a month, or about A$320 a year, in Stripe's favour. Set against the A$290 a year Square saves on a full week of in-person grooms, the two columns now roughly cancel each other out.

International cards

Stripe's international rate falls from 3.5% to 2.8%.

An honest note here rather than a comparison: Square's published Australian fee page lists a single rate per channel and does not publish a separate international card rate, while Square's help centre refers to an international transaction fee for cards issued outside your own country without stating the Australian figure. That means a like-for-like comparison is not possible from published pricing. If overseas cards are a meaningful share of your takings, ask Square to confirm your international rate in writing before you compare.

The line item to actually action: Radar

Alongside the rate cut, Stripe is splitting Radar, its fraud prevention product, into four tiers: Lite, Standard, Plus and Pro. This is the part of the announcement that needs a decision from you.

• Accounts that were already using Radar are on a free trial of Radar Standard until 22 January 2027, then continue on Standard at A$0.08 per screened transaction.
• Radar Lite is included with processing at no extra cost, and you can switch to it in one click from your Stripe Dashboard at any time.
• Radar Plus and Pro add custom rules, Adaptive 3D Secure and protection against patterns like free trial abuse.

Now the maths that makes this the important bit. The domestic cut gives you back 0.05% of each payment. Eight cents is 0.05% of A$160. So:

If your average ticket is under about A$160, Radar Standard costs you more than the rate cut gives back.

Most grooming, daycare, walking and training tickets sit well under A$160. On the same 120 payments a month at A$95, Radar Standard is A$9.60 a month, or about A$115 a year, against a rate cut worth about A$68 a year. Stay on Standard without thinking about it and you are roughly A$47 a year worse off than you are today.

That is not a disaster. It is also not what "we're lowering our pricing" sounds like, so make the call deliberately:

• Stay on Radar Standard if a lot of your volume is card-not-present from clients you have never met: online booking deposits from first-time customers, self-service package and course purchases, payment links sent to new enquiries. Fraud analytics and screening across all payment methods is worth eight cents on those.
• Switch to Radar Lite if nearly all of your card payments are from known, repeat clients with a card already on file, or are taken in person on a terminal. Lite still gives you Stripe's core card fraud models at no cost.

Because the Stripe account is in your name, this is a decision you make in your own Stripe Dashboard, not in Petboost. Put a reminder in for early January 2027.

Credit where it is due on this one: Square includes fraud protection within its stated rates with no separate fraud line item.

Where Square is genuinely strong

Square has been the default counter terminal for Australian small business for a decade, and for good reasons:

• No monthly fee and no lock-in contract
• The lowest published in-person rate of the two, for sellers on the current 1.6%
• Free point of sale software included, with retail stock handling
• Next business day settlement
• Afterpay built in at 6% + 30c per transaction, excluding GST
• Hardware you can buy off the shelf today: Reader around A$65, Terminal around A$329, Register around A$1,299

Choose Square if

• Nearly all of your takings are walk-ins with no booking behind them, so there is no appointment record for a payment to attach to
• You want a terminal in your hand this week with no software decision attached
• Your average ticket is genuinely under about A$55 and most of it is card-not-present
• You run a retail counter and want stock, retail sales and card payments in one place

That is a real set of businesses, and for them Square is the right answer.

Yes, you can keep using Square alongside Petboost

Nothing stops you, and plenty of businesses do exactly this.

Petboost has an External Payment option. Take the payment on your Square terminal, mark the appointment as paid externally, and your booking record stays complete and reportable. Cash and bank transfers work the same way, with no processing fee at all.

What you do not get is a data connection. Square processes the payment but has no idea which appointment, service, staff member or pet it was for, so the parts of the lifecycle that depend on knowing that do not happen:

• No invoice generated automatically from the booking
• No itemised Stripe Bank Feed into Xero, so deposits arrive as lump sums you match to appointments by hand
• No card on file, so no automatic charge when the appointment is completed
• No 72-hour pre-authorisation, so a declined card is discovered at the counter rather than three days out
• No mechanism to charge a no-show under a policy the client already agreed to
• Revenue by service, by staff member and by pet stays incomplete, because part of your income never passes through the booking record

That is the honest trade. Square is a very good way to take a payment. It is not a way to close a booking.

The version that works well in practice is a split: Square on the counter for retail and true walk-ins, Stripe through Petboost for everything that was booked. Our Square page sets out how the two sit together.

What this does not change

The surcharge ban still lands on 1 October 2026. The rate cut arrives on the exact day you lose the ability to pass card costs on as a separate line item, which is not a coincidence, and it does not offset it. If you have not already built processing costs into your service prices, that is the job to do before October. Petboost makes it a one-click setting, and our surcharge ban guide covers the compliant options.

Petboost's booking fee is unchanged. It is a platform fee, not a card surcharge, and it is not affected by any of this.

Plan pricing and thresholds are unchanged.

What to do

1. Nothing for the rate cut. It applies to your Stripe account automatically on the dates above.
2. Before 22 January 2027, choose your Radar tier in your Stripe Dashboard. Under a A$160 average ticket, Lite is the default worth arguing against, not for.
3. Before 1 October 2026, make sure processing costs are built into your prices, because the surcharge ban starts the same day.
4. If you are on Square, check whether you are on 1.6% or the legacy 1.9%. It changes the answer entirely.
5. If you still run a separate terminal for booked appointments, re-run the maths on your actual average ticket, not on the headline percentages.

The bottom line

1. The domestic cut is small: 0.05 percentage points, about A$68 a year on A$11,400 a month.
2. The international cut is the substantial one: 3.5% down to 2.8%, from April 2027.
3. In person, Square stays cheaper on the current 1.6% rate, by 12 to 35 cents a transaction. On the legacy 1.9% rate, Stripe's new price is cheaper above about A$40.
4. On card on file and online, Stripe is now cheaper above about A$54.55, down from A$60, which is nearly every ticket a pet business writes.
5. Radar is the decision that actually costs money. Make it before 22 January 2027.

For booked work, the two columns now cancel out to within a few hundred dollars a year either way. Which means the cost argument for keeping payments outside the system that took the booking, and doing the matching by hand, is thinner than it has ever been.

Further reading

• Stripe Australia pricing
• Square Australia fees
• RBA Review of Retail Payments Regulation, Conclusions Paper
• Australia is banning card surcharges: what it means for your pet business
• Which payment provider should I use for my pet business?
• How Stripe works inside Petboost

Disclaimer: general information only, not financial, tax or legal advice. Stripe rates are taken from Stripe's Australian pricing page and its notification to Australian account holders; Square rates are taken from squareup.com/au/en/payments/our-fees and Square's Australian support centre. All rates verified on 30 July 2026 and subject to change. Worked examples are illustrative and exclude GST. Your own rates depend on your account, your sign-up date and your mix of payment types, so confirm them with each provider before making a decision. If anything here is inaccurate, tell us and we will correct it.