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The Australian retail landscape is facing its biggest regulatory shake-up in a decade. Starting October 1, 2026, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) is completely banning customer surcharges on EFTPOS, Mastercard, Visa, and American Express transactions.

While the government is simultaneously lowering the merchant fee caps that banks can charge you, losing the ability to pass on costs directly means your checkout strategy must adapt immediately. At DigiCloud, we are helping businesses transition smoothly. Here is exactly what the changes mean and how you can prepare your retail store before October arrives.

What Exactly is Changing on October 1?

For years, retailers have relied on small percentage surcharges to cover the cost of card processing. From October, that safety net disappears:

• The Surcharge Ban: You can no longer add extra fees at the checkout when a customer taps or inserts a card.
• Regulated Fee Drops: To balance this, the RBA has forced banks to reduce the transaction caps they hit businesses with.
• The Catch: While overall processing costs will drop, they are not hitting zero. Merchants must now absorb these lower processing fees as a cost of doing business.

4 Strategic Steps for Retailers to Prepare

Don’t wait until October to scramble for a solution. Use this four-step checklist to protect your margins and optimize your point-of-sale (POS) systems right now.

1. Audit and Update Your POS Software

Your point-of-sale software and hardware terminals must be updated to remove automated surcharging rules. If your system automatically tacks on 1.5% for credit cards, you will be in breach of the law on day one. Talk to your IT provider to schedule firmware and cloud software updates well in advance.

2. Recalculate Your Base Pricing

Since card processing fees will now be absorbed directly into your cost of goods sold (COGS), your gross margins will take a minor hit. Retailers should review their baseline pricing structure now. Marginally adjusting product shelf prices ahead of October can help absorb the cost seamlessly without frustrating customers at the terminal.

3. Enable Least-Cost Routing (LCR)

If you haven’t enabled Least-Cost Routing yet, you are throwing money away. LCR forces your payment terminal to automatically send debit card transactions through the cheapest available network (often eftpos instead of Visa or Mastercard networks). Since you can no longer pass costs down to the consumer, minimizing your backend transaction fees is paramount.

4. Train Your Checkout Staff

Customers will have questions, especially as major banks scale back credit card reward points in response to these margin compressions. Ensure your staff are fully trained to understand that no surcharges apply, ensuring a fast, frictionless, and legally compliant checkout experience.

How DigiCloud Can Help You Pivot

Transitioning your systems shouldn’t cause operational downtime. At DigiCloud, we specialize in upgrading, integrating, and securing cloud-managed POS systems and retail infrastructure.

We can help you review your merchant agreements, configure automated backend routing to cut transaction fees, and ensure your software complies with the new RBA mandates.

Want to audit your retail payment systems before the October deadline?

Contact the DigiCloud team today to book an operational consult.

Posted by Jason Shico