Card Surcharges Are Going — Is Your Pricing Ready?

What the new card surcharge rules reveal about your true costs 

I’ve asked Bruce Gleeson onto The Business Behind Your Business podcast a few times now, and there’s one thing he keeps coming back to. Most business owners don’t really know what it costs them to make or deliver what they sell. They know their price. They know roughly what’s in the bank at the end of the month. But the actual cost, the full cost, that’s a different question. And most owners haven’t sat down and worked it out properly.

I think that’s a fair point. And I think most of us, myself included at times, have been guilty of not looking closely enough at this.

That gap between price and true cost doesn’t usually cause a problem day to day. It just sits there quietly. A good month covers it. A surcharge here or there covers it too, without anyone really noticing. Which is probably why the new card surcharge rules are such a useful example right now. They’re about to take away one of the things that’s been quietly covering that gap.

So what’s actually changing

From 1 October 2026, businesses in Australia won’t be able to add a surcharge to card payments anymore. That covers Visa, Mastercard, eftpos and Amex.

To be clear, this isn’t every kind of surcharge. Weekend and public holiday surcharges are still fine. Booking fees and service fees are still fine too. This is specifically about card payment surcharges.

The Reserve Bank looked into this and found the current surcharge system had gotten too complicated for both businesses and customers. They’re also lowering the fees banks can charge for card transactions, which should help bring costs down over time, especially for smaller businesses.

On paper, it looks like a small, technical change. But I think it’s actually a good moment to stop and check something a lot of businesses haven’t checked in a while.

Why this matters more than it looks

If your business has been putting a surcharge on card payments, that surcharge has probably been quietly doing a job your pricing should have been doing all along. It’s been covering the gap between what you charge and what it actually costs you to get paid.

Take that away, and the gap doesn’t go anywhere. It’s just sitting inside your margin now instead of being charged separately. For some businesses that’s barely noticeable. For others, especially if margins are already tight, this might be the first time in a while they’ve had to ask a simple but slightly uncomfortable question. Does my price actually cover what this costs me?

That’s really Bruce’s point, just playing out in real life. The surcharge change isn’t really the problem. It’s just the thing that’s forcing a conversation a lot of businesses have been putting off, sometimes without even realising it. Card fees are only one piece of your true cost. There’s usually more sitting underneath that, things that are easy to miss because they don’t show up on an invoice.

Most business owners don’t actually know what their product costs them

What we mean by “true cost”

When we sit down with a client and talk about true cost, we’re not talking about a rough guess. We mean actually working out, properly, what it costs to deliver a product or service.

That includes things like:

• What you spend directly on materials and labour for that job
• What it actually costs you to accept and process payments
• A fair share of your overheads, things like rent, software, insurance, admin time
• Your own time, especially if you run a service business, because this is usually the bit that gets left out completely

Once you’ve actually laid that out, it gets a lot easier to answer the real question honestly. Is your current price still profitable? Or has it just been the price you’ve always charged?

What this means for your pricing

The general advice out there is sensible enough. Look at your pricing. Understand what card payments are actually costing you. Talk to your payment provider. Update your prices where you need to.

But from what we see with clients, the businesses that come out of this in the best shape are the ones who use it as a proper excuse to look at their numbers, not just tweak a surcharge line and move on. That usually means:

• Working out your true cost of delivery, not just your card fees
• Being honest about whether your pricing has been propped up by a surcharge
• Deciding on purpose how you want to respond, whether that’s adjusting your prices, changing providers, or just accepting a slightly smaller margin on card payments
• Letting your customers know clearly if anything is changing, rather than doing it quietly at the last minute

Done properly, this isn’t something to be defensive about. It’s actually a decent chance to fix a pricing gap that might have been sitting there for years without anyone noticing.

Where to from here

The surcharge changes are really just the trigger here. The bigger question underneath it is one every business owner should be asking every so often, not just when a rule changes. Do you actually know what it costs you to deliver what you sell? Including the bits that don’t show up neatly on an invoice?

If you’re not sure, that’s worth sitting with for a minute. That’s exactly the kind of thing we look at in a Business Health Check. We take a proper, honest look at where your business is at right now, pricing, cash flow, margins, and everything underneath that, and build a clear plan from there. No guessing, just a straightforward look at what’s actually going on before we talk about fixing anything.

If the surcharge changes have got you asking a few questions about your own pricing, that’s actually a good sign. It means you’re paying attention to the right things. Happy to help you find the answers if you want a hand.

This article was prompted by a conversation with Bruce Gleeson on The Business Behind Your Business podcast. Bruce helps business owners and families get the right advice early, instead of trying to figure things out alone. He wants to help people who are stressed make better financial decisions. You can contact Bruce here: www.jonespartners.net.au/about-us , and you can listen to the full episode here: Ep 155 – How to Keep Your Business Afloat – Insights on Costs, Cash and Customers