RBA surcharge ban reshapes Australian card payments as ATO weighs credit-card tax option

Surcharges banned, consumer pricing dynamics reset

Card surcharges effectively disappear in Australia from 1 October 2026, according to coverage of the Reserve Bank's new framework. Merchants still pay the underlying fee, but the line item that used to appear on a customer's receipt at the point of sale is gone. The same change reached debit cards on the same date, and one explainer notes that the surcharge ban does not protect keyed transactions from the higher dispute exposure that comes with manually entered card numbers. Practitioners who model checkout margins should treat the visible surcharge as zero from that date while leaving the merchant cost in the model.

ATO–RBA fee talks drag on as tax-office deadline looms

The Australian Tax Office is still negotiating lower fees with banks, credit-card companies and the Reserve Bank to keep accepting credit-card payments for tax bills. Reporting indicates the ATO had earlier warned Labor about the consequences of a surcharge ban and refused to absorb $200 million in merchant fees, planning instead to cut off credit-card tax payments. The ATO announcement was made on October 1, the same day the RBA's surcharge ban took effect, leaving the tax channel hanging while the talks continue. Treasury and opposition figures have since pressed the government to intervene.

Card pricing around the edges

Travel-money products are repositioning around the new fee landscape. One Australian bank is promoting a travel money card with $0 international transaction fees and locked-in exchange rates for up to 15 foreign currencies, with a registration step before trips. For consumers who had previously absorbed surcharges on overseas transactions, the comparison is now between the underlying scheme fee and any explicit platform or conversion margin, since the surcharge line itself has been removed.

Bank capital rule update in New Zealand

Outside Australia, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand published a banking-supervision handbook document titled BPR131 – Standardised Credit Risk RWAs October 2026. The document sets out the standardised approach for calculating risk-weighted assets on credit-risk exposures under the new supervision rules. Practitioners modelling Australian and New Zealand bank balance sheets now have a refreshed standardised credit-risk RWA framework to align internal capital calculations with.

What to track next

The ATO's credit-card tax-payment channel remains the open question, with lower fees still being negotiated with banks, networks and the RBA. Any change to that channel, or to the underlying merchant-cost recovery that used to flow through surcharges, will show up first in ATO notices and Reserve Bank statements, so practitioners should monitor both for the next update rather than reading the absence of a surcharge as the end of the story.

Readers comparing payment-cost options across borders may find an Inflation Calculator useful for normalising fee differences across years, while an Age Calculator can support the trip-registration timing that one travel product now asks customers to record.