Today is 1 October 2026. The Reserve Bank of Australia's card surcharge ban is now in effect. From this point, Australian venues cannot pass card processing fees to customers as a line-item surcharge on consumer eftpos, Visa or Mastercard transactions.
If you've been following this blog through the year, you'll have had three months of runway to prepare. If today is the first time you're looking at this — this post covers everything you need to action right now, in order of priority.
Two things matter from here: compliance (are you set up correctly for the new rules?) and margin recovery (have you replaced what you're absorbing?). Work through both checklists below.
1 Oct '26
RBA card surcharge ban in effect from today
2 steps
Compliance first. Margin recovery second. Both checklists below.
3,000+
Venues on Ai-Menu platform across Australia and New Zealand
What Changed Today
The ACCC enforces the surcharge ban from 1 October 2026. Passing card processing costs to customers as a checkout line item — whether labelled as a "surcharge," "card fee," "processing fee," or similar — is no longer permitted for consumer eftpos, Visa and Mastercard transactions.
Your underlying merchant service fees haven't changed. You still pay your acquiring bank to process card payments. The difference is those costs are now yours to absorb — or to recover through operational margin, which is what the rest of this post is about.
"The surcharge line item is gone. The venues that come out ahead are those who replaced it with something better before today arrived."
— Ai-Menu, October 2026
The Compliance Checklist
Work through each item before your next service today.
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Remove the surcharge from your POS.In Ai-PosX, go to your payment settings and disable any automatic card surcharge that applies at checkout. If you're unsure where this sits in your setup, call our support team now.
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Check your EFTPOS terminal settings.On Ai-Pay terminals, confirm the surcharge configuration has been removed at the terminal level. If you configured surcharges in both the POS and the terminal, both need to be updated.
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Update your online ordering checkout.If your Ai-Takeaway checkout displayed a card processing fee, confirm this has been removed. The ban applies to online payments as well as in-venue.
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Brief your team before opening today.Staff need to know that the surcharge is gone and that there's nothing to add, explain, or apologise for. It's simply not there anymore. Customers will notice — usually positively.
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Remove surcharge signage and menu notes.Any printed notices, menu footnotes, or counter signage that references a card surcharge should be removed immediately. Leaving them up — even if the charge isn't being applied — creates customer confusion and potential compliance risk.
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Confirm with your acquiring bank.Your merchant services agreement may need to be updated to reflect that surcharging has ceased. Check in with your bank or payment provider to confirm your account status is aligned with the new rules.
The Margin Recovery Checklist
Compliance is the immediate priority. Margin recovery is the ongoing one. If you haven't yet activated the tools that replace surcharge revenue, start today — the longer you wait, the longer you're absorbing the cost with nothing replacing it.
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Activate Ai-Kiosk or Ai-QR upsell prompts.Ai-Kiosk and Ai-QR drive average spend 10–20% higher through consistent upsell prompts. That lift alone typically exceeds the surcharge revenue being absorbed.
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Move online orders to your direct channel.If you're still paying 25–30%+ commission to delivery platforms, switching even 30% of those orders to Ai-Takeaway at 3% more than replaces the surcharge margin in most cases. This is the highest-impact single action available.
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Tighten your table turn.Each additional table turn on a busy night generates more revenue than months of accumulated surcharge income. Self-checkout via Ai-QR and kitchen display via Ai-BumpX are the two fastest ways to add turns without adding staff.
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Review your low-margin menu items.Ai-Chat can identify your lowest-margin items immediately. With card costs now absorbed, items that were marginal before may need a price review or to come off the menu.
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Capture missed bookings with Ai-Booking.Every missed reservation call that could have been a cover is revenue walking to a competitor. Ai-Booking takes reservations 24/7 and sends automatic reminders to reduce no-shows — capturing the revenue that was previously invisible.
Quick Wins Still Available
If you haven't yet implemented any of the margin recovery tools above, the ones with the fastest setup and earliest return are:
Ai-QR — fastest to deploy, lowest upfront cost
QR cards and disks can be on tables quickly. No hardware procurement, no lengthy setup. Customers use their own phones. The Lookout Bar saw add-on sales jump from 3–5% to over 14% after installation — and oyster sales up 32%.
Ai-Takeaway — highest margin recovery per action
Shifting delivery orders from third-party platforms to your direct channel at 3% vs 25–30%+ commission has an immediate and compounding impact on margin. Salvitos tripled their online revenue as a share of total after activating direct ordering.
Ai-Chat — fastest visibility on where margin is leaking
Ask Ai-Chat which items have the lowest margin right now. With card costs now absorbed across all transactions, a menu price review is worth doing today — and Ai-Chat makes it a 30-second query, not a spreadsheet exercise.
Common questions from Australian hospitality operators on 1 October 2026
Yes. From 1 October 2026, the RBA's card surcharge ban applies to consumer eftpos, Visa and Mastercard transactions. You can no longer add a checkout surcharge for card processing costs on these payment types. The ACCC is the enforcement body.
Yes. Your underlying processing costs remain — the ban prevents you from passing them to customers as a line-item charge, not from being charged them by your acquiring bank. This is why margin recovery through operational efficiency is important, not optional.
The three fastest: (1) Activate upsell prompts on Ai-Kiosk or Ai-QR — average spend typically lifts 10–20%, which exceeds most surcharge rates immediately. (2) Shift delivery orders from third-party platforms to Ai-Takeaway direct — the 3% vs 25–30%+ commission difference is immediate and compounding. (3) Talk to Ai-Chat about your lowest-margin items and review pricing today.
If you had a surcharge configured in Ai-PosX, yes — it needs to be disabled in your payment settings today before service. If you're unsure how to locate or remove the surcharge setting, contact our support team directly and we'll walk you through it.
Yes. The ban prevents checkout surcharges, not menu price increases. Many venues have already adjusted prices modestly ahead of October. If you're considering a price review, use Ai-Chat to identify where margin is thinnest and Ai-Manager's competitor benchmarking to check local price positioning before making changes.
