From 1 September 2017, all businesses that impose payment surcharges on card transactions need to comply with the new law that bans excessive payment surcharges. The purpose of the ban is to stop payment surcharges that are more than the actual cost of accepting that payment method. The cost to a business of accepting each payment method is also known as the cost of acceptance for that method. A payment surcharge is considered excessive if it exceeds the ‘cost of acceptance’. For example, if the ‘cost of acceptance’ for Visa Credit is 1%, you can only be charged 1% on Visa card payments. So what payments are affected?
- Eftpos (debit and prepaid)
- MasterCard (credit, debit and prepaid)
- Visa (credit, debit and prepaid) and
- American Express companion cards (issued through an Australian financial service provider, rather than directly through American Express.
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This article appeared in our August 2017 newsletter.