Card payment sucharges banned in Australia from 2026

[AuSammy]

First our telcos banned foreign mobiles from working in Australia

I dibs - never happened

 

[oz_mark]

First our telcos banned foreign mobiles from working in Australia,

I've never known anyone coming from overseas having issues using their phones in Australia anytime recently

 

[dajop]

I've never known anyone coming from overseas having issues using their phones in Australia anytime recently

Yeh in the early 2000s used to be an issue coming from the US and vice versa!

I always use my Singapore phone in Australia and have done so for 15+ years without issue.

 

[AuSammy]

Yeh in the early 2000s used to be an issue coming from the US and vice versa!

I always use my Singapore phone in Australia and have done so for 15+ years without issue.

I think you will possibly find the issue was the US was still using very very old pre-sim card mobile network technology so outdated that Australia had already moved on to what the rest of the world was using and decommissioned the old equipment.

 

[I love to travel]

I wonder with QF will factor this in their financial reporting this week.

 

[Zero]

Sorry, what??? Do you mean that a visitor has to buy a new handset just to use a mobile in Australia?

If they have an older phone that the telcos have decided is unable to call 000, yes.

I have a UK phone purchased 2018 which still works in the UK and every other country where I have tried it, but it is blocked in Australia because the three telcos have decided that it is not 4G compatible, which is incorrect.

Telstra and optus had blocked it by the end of 2024, but it took Vodafone until early 2026 to decide to block it (and I was able to use it with vodafone until then).


I have encountered several online stores which didn't accept non-Australian cards, although this wasn't explicitly mentioned, they just got rejected without the transaction even being submitted to the card network.

but my understanding is that they can continue to surcharge for foreign cards.

Can anyone confirm and/or provide a source for this?

As an aside, the surcharge ban in the EU/EEA only applies to cards issued in the EU/EEA. Some European banks have started applying surcharges to cards issued outside the EEA, which can be over 4%. This seems to have hit a tipping point recently as I am suddenly seeing a lot of posts on forums and other social media about it.