Reset your market stall prices without a card surcharge

Since 1 October 2026, Australian businesses can no longer add a surcharge for Visa, Mastercard, American Express or eftpos payments. For your stall, the practical response is to remove the card surcharge and decide whether your listed prices need adjusting to cover payment costs. You don’t automatically need to raise every price by your card processor’s percentage: start with your actual fees, payment mix and margin.

This guide reflects the rules and published processor rates checked on 22 October 2026. All examples are in Australian dollars.

What changed, and which fees can still exist?

The ACCC’s card surcharge guidance confirms the ban covers Visa, Mastercard, American Express and eftpos. Businesses can recover card acceptance costs through their overall prices, but must not mislead customers about prices or why they have increased.

A processor fee is what your payment provider charges you. A card surcharge is an extra amount charged to the customer for paying by card. The ban removes the latter, not the former. Renaming a card-only charge a “service fee” does not turn it into an unrelated fee.

The ACCC says other fees, such as weekend and public holiday surcharges, are outside this card-surcharge ban. That is not blanket approval for every fee or price display. Keep any genuine, unrelated fee clearly explained and check the rules relevant to your business.

Card networks and payment service providers enforce the no-surcharge rules, according to the ACCC. If an old surcharge setting remains active, contact your provider rather than assuming the setting makes the charge permissible.

Lower interchange does not mean processing is free

In its 20 October update on payments reform, the RBA said domestic interchange reductions came into force on 1 October. Its summary of the reforms also explains the push for lower merchant costs and greater fee transparency.

For pricing purposes, don’t treat an interchange reduction as a guaranteed matching reduction in your bill. Use your provider’s current rate and actual transaction records. Keep terminal costs, subscriptions, platform fees and processing fees separate so you can see what has changed.

Compare cash, PayID and card costs on the same basis

The table shows processor costs on a $20 payment using published Australian rates as of 22 October 2026. It excludes Vendl fees, hardware, subscriptions and other account-specific charges. These are different payment channels, not interchangeable quotes for the same checkout.

Payment route	Published rate or cost basis	Cost on $20
Cash	Budget for handling, banking and discrepancies	Use your actual costs
PayID	Check your bank or provider’s terms	Not confirmed here
Stripe domestic card	1.65% + $0.30	$0.63
Square online payment	2.2%	$0.44
Square card-present payment	1.6% for sellers who joined on or after 30 May 2024; 1.9% before then	$0.32 or $0.38

Stripe’s Australian pricing page lists the domestic card rate above. Square’s Australian fee guidance distinguishes card-present payments from its online and other payment products. Check your account’s applicable rate before changing prices; published rates can change.

Don’t apply Square’s reader rate to an online checkout. Likewise, calculate a fixed transaction charge per order, not per item: a customer buying three products together makes one payment.

PayID has no Vendl fee, but that does not establish a universal zero cost across banks and providers. PayID and PayTo are different payment methods, so a published PayTo rate is not evidence of a PayID fee. Cash also deserves a handling allowance rather than an automatic assumption that it costs nothing.

Work out one price using your payment mix

Start with the amount you need to retain, then allow for the share of orders using each payment method. You can absorb the cost within your existing margin, raise prices, or combine the two.

Hypothetical example: a home baker wants to retain $20 per box after transaction fees, before ingredients, labour, overheads and any GST owed. Assume 60% of orders use domestic Stripe cards through Vendl Free, while 40% use cash or PayID. For this calculation only, cash and PayID costs are assumed to be zero.

Vendl Free adds a 2.5% Vendl fee to card payments, separate from processing fees. Using the Stripe rate above, the modelled card cost is therefore 4.15% plus $0.30 per order.

1. Weighted percentage fee: 60% × 4.15% = 2.49%.
2. Weighted fixed fee: 60% × $0.30 = $0.18 per order.
3. Required price: ($20 + $0.18) ÷ (1 − 0.0249) = approximately $20.70.

At $20.70, the model leaves about $20 per order after those fees, averaged across the assumed payment mix. Simply adding yesterday’s fee to yesterday’s price can leave a small shortfall because percentage fees also apply to the increase.

This is a payment-cost calculation, not a complete profit or tax calculation. Add an allocation for hardware, subscriptions and cash handling where relevant, and check GST treatment with your accountant. If customers often buy several boxes together, recalculate using your average order rather than assuming one transaction per box.

Show a clear price before customers choose how to pay

One standard price across cash, PayID and card is a straightforward starting point. Put the price a card-paying customer will actually pay on your stall signs and menu, without an extra card charge appearing at checkout.

Cash and PayID discounts remain possible. The ACCC says payment-method discounts must be clearly disclosed before customers choose to book, order or pay. A discount should not be a misleading way to advertise a lower price and then surprise card-paying customers.

• Remove old card-surcharge notices and check checkout settings.
• Match shelf labels, menus, online listings and checkout prices.
• If offering a discount, explain its amount and conditions before ordering.
• Check any unrelated weekend fee separately rather than repurposing the card surcharge.
• Run a small test purchase and inspect the receipt for unexpected payment-method charges.

Use Vendl orders to check whether your prices hold up

With Vendl’s stall checkout, Australian sellers can offer cash, PayID, Stripe or Square payments. Cash and PayID need no connected processor and carry no Vendl fee. On Free, Vendl charges 2.5% on Stripe and Square payments, with processor fees separate; Pro removes the Vendl fee, not the processor’s charges. Payments taken on your own Square reader or Square POS have no Vendl fee.

Australian sellers absorb the Vendl fee rather than passing it on as a card surcharge. To check your pricing against actual Vendl orders:

1. Open Orders and select a representative date range.
2. Download Orders CSV for payment method, provider, totals, GST, Vendl fees, processor fees and net received.
3. Group orders by payment method and compare the actual fee total with your pricing allowance.
4. Add costs outside the export, such as hardware or bank charges, before deciding whether to adjust prices again.

Processor fees appear once the provider reports them, usually within an hour. Wait for those figures before treating a blank fee as zero. Vendl’s GST recording is available for GST-registered Australian sellers when configured; the export supports your records rather than replacing accounting advice.

To keep your payment mix and order costs together, create a Vendl account and use its payment options and order exports to check your stall pricing.