Card payment sucharges banned in Australia from 2026

[clifford]

This just in from Westpac, for Westpac Altitude Qantas Black credit card: Interest rate, cash rate, and annual fee all UP from 30th September!
So if the bank is now going to charge us instead of the business, what changed - except the cc user is actually worse off! And banks can vary their charges on a whim!

Yes, I got an email from Westpac today too. I'm not sure how it relates to my situation, so I'll wait until it happens and then decide whether I can handle the changes or not. If not, I'll be changing to a different card. I'm not really your average punter.

 

[Mr_Orange]

People, stop crying about the change. It's happening and it's not going to get reversed. Move on. As I have said before, we should never have even been in this situation to start off with.

Quite frankly, any business that is upset about this should immediately be folded!

 

[HMcM]

People, stop crying about the change. It's happening and it's not going to get reversed. Move on. As I have said before, we should never have even been in this situation to start off with.

Quite frankly, any business that is upset about this should immediately be folded!

And we should never be in the upcoming situation of price controls either.

cough decisions get reversed all the time. The previous market control (preventing private businesses from putting restrictions on other companies they do business with) was bad, the new market control (telling a private company for what fee they must sell their service) is also bad.

This change doesn't fix the issue, it makes a new issue.

 

[Happy Dude]

I had two contrasting experiences last week, paying with the same NAB/MyCard Premier Mastercard.

New tyres $1,850 - no surcharge.
Medical specialist $720 - $7 surcharge.

One operates in a competitive market, the other doesn't. If that's not opportunistic surcharging, then I don't know what is. There are many instances like this where surcharge bans are a good thing.

Come October, I'll earn fewer points for those transactions but I'm coming from an already low earn, so I'm not overly invested with these changes. I'll be more affected if Amex is "enhanced". Sure, the banks fees on transactions will be reduced but we still need make the transactions and now, generally, prices are higher, so the nett effect to the banks is perhaps overstated. Seems to me that the banks are throwing the baby out with the bath water. They should be incentivising credit card use and uptake of high-end cards to bridge the gap between today's fees and the lower fees from October.

 

[Mr_Orange]

Medical specialist

This category surcharging has always got my goat. As if they don't charge more than enough in the first place to suck up 1-2%.

 

[lovestotravel]

People, stop crying about the change. It's happening and it's not going to get reversed. Move on. As I have said before, we should never have even been in this situation to start off with.

Quite frankly, any business that is upset about this should immediately be folded!

Ever run a business ?

They can't simply absorb 1-2%

I had two contrasting experiences last week, paying with the same NAB/MyCard Premier Mastercard.

New tyres $1,850 - no surcharge.
Medical specialist $720 - $7 surcharge.

One operates in a competitive market, the other doesn't. If that's not opportunistic surcharging, then I don't know what is. There are many instances like this where surcharge bans are a good thing.

Come October, I'll earn fewer points for those transactions but I'm coming from an already low earn, so I'm not overly invested with these changes. I'll be more affected if Amex is "enhanced". Sure, the banks fees on transactions will be reduced but we still need make the transactions and now, generally, prices are higher, so the nett effect to the banks is perhaps overstated. Seems to me that the banks are throwing the baby out with the bath water. They should be incentivising credit card use and uptake of high-end cards to bridge the gap between today's fees and the lower fees from October.

Assuming the tyres were from a large business though ?

It's generally the small businesses that surcharge, these are the ones that will simply raise prices