Best payment gateways in Australia: what merchant fees cost after the 1 October 2026 surcharge ban

Accepting a card costs an Australian business turning over under A$1 million a year 0.85% to 2% on debit or EFTPOS, and 1% to 2% on credit. Those are Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) figures, on 2023-24 data. Until 1 October 2026 a merchant can recover that cost with a surcharge. From that date, on Visa, Mastercard and EFTPOS, it cannot. Boldrails acquires and settles card and account-to-account payments in Australia, and every rate below is dated, because several already carry an expiry.

What do merchant fees actually cost in Australia?

The line item on an Australian statement is the merchant service fee, and the regulator calls the total your cost of acceptance. The three parts behave differently:

• Interchangeis what your acquirer pays the customer's card issuer. The card network sets it, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) caps it, and it changes in 2026.
• Scheme fees go to Visa or Mastercard for running the transaction.
• The acquirer's margin is what your provider keeps. It is the only part your provider sets, and the only part a negotiation moves.

A blended percentage hides all three. See what a payment gateway does for how the pieces connect.

What changes on 1 October 2026, and what changes on 1 April 2027?

Read row four twice. Most summaries report credit interchange falling from 0.8% to 0.3%. That holds for consumer credit only. The commercial credit cap is maintained at 0.8%, so if your customers pay on company cards your interchange does not drop. The Payments System Board also refused every carve-out, so online merchants get no exemption.

The Payments System Board states its decision in one sentence, and the scope matters as much as the date:

"The PSB has decided that it would be in the public interest to remove surcharging by lifting the prohibition on 'no-surcharge' rules for all designated card networks (debit, prepaid, credit). This decision covers eftpos, Mastercard and Visa cards."

"All designated card networks" is doing the work there. It is why the exemptions in the next section are the ones they are.

Coverage of the reform keeps merging three different money figures:

• $1.8 billion in card surcharges was charged on designated networks in 2024/25, by the 16% of Australian merchants who surcharge.
• Of that total, $1.6 billion was paid by consumers and $0.2 billion by businesses. These are parts of the $1.8 billion, not additions to it.
• Separately, the interchange cuts lower wholesale card costs by around $910 million a year, a figure the Australian Treasury repeated on 31 March 2026.

Foreign-issued cards are 3% of Australian card transactions but 20% of the interchange acquirers pay here. That gap is why the second date exists.

Australian gateway fees compared, with the date each rate expires

Australian gateway roundups publish rates without dates. That stopped working in March 2026, when a provider began publishing the dates its own numbers expire. So the table below carries the column those roundups leave out.

A cap is not a discount. GoCardless caps its Standard rate at A$4, cheap on a A$400 invoice. Above A$3,000 it adds 0.3% on top, so the effective rate climbs again exactly where a cap led you to expect it to flatten. Advanced runs 1.25% + A$0.40, capped at A$5. Read that shape before you rank two quotes: the effective percentage falls as the ticket grows, then a threshold switches a second percentage back on.

The GST basis makes headline numbers incomparable. Eway states its prices include GST. GoCardless states its fees are exclusive of GST. Those percentages measure different things, and no comparison page in this search result says so before subtracting one from the other.

The other problem is accuracy. A widely cited Australian comparison page, last modified March 2023, publishes Stripe at 1.75% + $0.30 domestic and 2.9% + $0.30 international against Stripe's own 1.7% and 3.5%. Its figures are not reproduced here.

Where these providers beat us: Airwallex publishes the lowest domestic headline, Eway publishes both a GST basis and a settlement window, and all four give you a number without a conversation. We do not, because card acquiring for higher-risk profiles is priced on the profile. See how we acquire and settle in Australia.

Which cards escape the surcharge ban?

Covered from 1 October 2026, no surcharge permitted:

1. EFTPOS debit and prepaid
2. Mastercard debit, prepaid and credit
3. Visa debit, prepaid and credit

Not covered, surcharging can continue:

1. American Express
2. Diners Club
3. PayPal
4. BPAY

The mechanism matters. Visa, Mastercard and EFTPOS have each decided to introduce their own "no surcharge" rules from 1 October 2026. The RBA makes that possible by lifting its own prohibition on such rules.

"Not covered" means "not yet". The RBA will consult from mid-2026 on areas this review did not reach: mobile wallets, three-party networks such as American Express, buy now pay later, and e-commerce platforms. The Australian Banking Association carries the plain-English version.

On our side: we acquire Visa, Mastercard and American Express. EFTPOS and BPAY are Australian market infrastructure we do not carry. Naming them here is context, not a coverage claim.

Why Stripe's Australian rate card already has two future dates on it

This is a mapping, not an accusation. Stripe publishes both dates itself, retrieved 21 August 2026. What no page in this search result explains is why they sit six months apart. They are not a vendor's scheduling preference. A domestic rate and an international rate move on different dates because the regulation setting their floor moves on different dates.

So any Australian comparison quoting Stripe's current 1.7% is quoting a rate with an expiry on it.

Stripe does not publish the replacement numbers, so nobody can table them, ourselves included. Of the five Australian gateway comparison pages parsed on 21 August 2026, none carries the 1 April 2027 date. Our own Australia payments page records both dates in its Stripe row.

What Stripe alternatives in Australia actually charge

The main alternatives to Stripe in Australia are Airwallex, Square, GoCardless, Adyen, PayPal and Eway. Each one is the right answer to a different question.

• Airwallex publishes 1.65% + A$0.30 domestic and 3.40% + A$0.30 international with FX of 0.5% to 1%, built around multi-currency collection. If you hold several currencies it beats us on the number and the account structure.
• Square suits a business that wants in-person and online acceptance in one account, hardware included.
• GoCardless comes out cheapest on small recurring bank debits, because its A$4 cap flattens the effective rate on mid-size invoices.
• Adyen is built for enterprise volume and negotiated pricing. That fits a large merchant with a treasury function.
• PayPal wins on buyer familiarity at checkout. A higher rate can pay for itself in conversion.
• Eway is an Australian incumbent with local support, and publishes both a GST basis and a settlement window.

There is a pattern the vendor roundups skip. MobileTransaction, an independent editorial site, recommends Eway specifically for high-risk business types normally rejected by Stripe, and describes it as accepting riskier businesses. That is a third-party record of a real gap: mainstream Australian gateways decline whole categories of legitimate business. Expert Market lists a comparable set.

We are built for that population: high-risk and high-volume merchants, underwritten on the profile rather than screened out by category. You can check whether we accept your vertical first.

Online gateway fees are not EFTPOS terminal fees

Australian fee searches mix the two, so a search for merchant fees returns terminal rental quotes beside gateway percentages. They are not comparable line by line: a rental has no percentage, and a percentage has no hardware.

The reform does not split them either. The Payments System Board considered differential surcharging between card-present and card-not-present transactions and judged it against the public interest. One reason: allow it, and merchants would steer customers into whichever channel could still be surcharged. An online merchant gets the same treatment as a shop. And if you came looking for the best payment app as a consumer, this is the merchant side of that fee.

Which Australian rails settle without a card at all?

Every Australian gateway comparison leaves this part out. The surcharge ban and the interchange caps are a card reform, and a payment that never touches a card network has no interchange to reduce.

We collect and settle over PayID, PayTo, Osko and BECS Direct Debit alongside cards, plus crypto settlement in AUD for businesses wanting an on-ramp or off-ramp beside card volume. So a business already taking most of its money over the NPP gets very little from either reform date. See the markets, methods and rails we carry.

How Boldrails prices and settles in Australia

Boldrails is a licensed principal provider. We acquire and we settle directly, with no chain of providers between your checkout and your funds. We hold the necessary licences required in the markets we serve.

In Australia we acquire cards including Visa, Mastercard and American Express, plus Apple Pay and Google Pay, and we collect over PayID, PayTo, Osko, BECS Direct Debit and bank transfer, as well as crypto. We settle in AUD, USD and crypto, and pay out to bank accounts and over NPP or Osko. We also handle paying out at volume.

On price we name the lines, not the numbers. A quote covers an acquiring rate per card transaction, a percentage plus a fixed amount. Then a separate rate for account-to-account collection over PayID, PayTo, Osko and BECS Direct Debit. Then an FX conversion fee where your settlement currency differs from the one you charged in, a chargeback or dispute fee, and a payout fee. Five lines, not one percentage. Both the rate and the limits are set on your risk profile and confirmed at onboarding. A published rate card either overcharges a clean profile or refuses a complex one.

KYB verification runs on your company documents and directors. Onboarding takes 3 to 14 days, depending on your case. Get approved to accept payments in Australia.

How to compare merchant fees without getting caught by the caps and thresholds

1. 1
   The fixed component. On a A$12 transaction, A$0.30 is 2.5% by itself. On a A$1,200 transaction it is nothing. Test quotes against your median ticket, not A$100.
2. 2
   The cap. A cap helps small and mid-size tickets and does nothing above it.
3. 3
   The threshold. Check whether a second percentage switches on above a ticket size, the way 0.3% above A$3,000 does. This is the term most often missed.
4. 4
   The GST basis. One provider quotes inclusive, another exclusive. Put both on the same basis before you subtract one from the other.
5. 5
   The foreign card rate. From 1 April 2027 interchange on all foreign-issued cards is capped at 1.0%. If overseas customers are a real share of your volume, that cap beats the domestic cuts.

Then use the lever the reform hands you. Large acquirers, those processing above $10 billion in card transactions a year, must publish their average merchant fees quarterly, first publication due by 30 October 2026. They must also publish an interchange pass-through measure for the four quarters after the October 2026 interchange change, first publication due by 30 January 2027, and the RBA republishes it.

Ask your acquirer for its pass-through number. The cuts are worth around $910 million a year across Australian merchants, and pass-through measures whether any of it reached you.

Frequently asked questions