What are the rules behind extra fees and surcharges applied to purchases?

Steve Worthington, Swinburne University of Technology

You head to the register at the cafe to pay for your lunch, swipe your card and suddenly realise you’ve been hit with an extra small but unexpected charge.

It might be listed on your receipt as a service or merchant fee, but either way it’s because you’ve used a credit or debit card.

With the pandemic accelerating the use of cards instead of cash – only 13 per cent of Australians use cash, dropping from 27 per cent in the past five years – these extra charges have become mainstream.

However, as was highlighted by National Australia Bank chief executive Andrew Irvine during a parliamentary inquiry into bank charges recently, they are often applied, in varying amounts, by businesses for reasons not always in line with their original purpose.

Irvine slammed as “outrageous” a 10 per cent surcharge he was forced to pay when he recently bought a cup of coffee at a Sydney cafe. “I don’t like the lack of transparency and lack of consistency,” he said.

But most Australians are making these extra payments every day, without question. So how did this end up happening – and what can you do about it?

Card surcharges in Australia

At the start of this century, payments for goods and services were mainly made by cash, paper cheques, credit and debit cards.

The first two of these options would eventually be deposited into a bank account by the merchant who ran the business. The latter two would be processed by the bank or financial institution that would charge the business a merchant service fee.

For debit cards this might be a fixed fee. But for credit cards it would be proportionate with the value of the goods or services.

The Reserve Bank of Australia became concerned the use of credit cards was greater than that of debit cards and introduced surcharging in January 2003. The intention was to lower the cost to the merchant of accepting debit cards and change customer behaviour.

This has been achieved, as both the volume and value of paying by debit cards now exceeds the volume and value of paying by credit cards.

However, the reality in 2024 is that card surcharges have become commonplace, and in a wide variety of payment situations.

It’s estimated to cost us billions

It is difficult to calculate the total cost of surcharging to Australian consumers since they became legal more than 20 years ago, because the rates charged vary widely.

But in a recent inquiry, Labor MP Jerome Laxale suggested it added up to A$4 billion in the last year.

Surcharges can be imposed by small to medium enterprises such as your local cafe, doctor’s surgery, your energy supplier, or when you use a card to pay your council rates.

As an example, my rates are payable by card, with a surcharge of 1.10 per cnet for Mastercard and Visa credit, and 0.55 per cent for eftpos and Mastercard and Visa debit cards.

When surcharges can be applied

Many merchants charge the same rate for all their card payments and some fail to alert customers to the extra fee before accepting the payment at their terminal, which they are required to do.

Indeed, even on a receipt for payment, the surcharge can be described by the merchant as a ‘handling’ or ‘merchant’ fee.

A woman and a man putting letters on a sign
Businesses must alert customers to surcharges before they accept payment. bpro.kiev.ua/Shutterstock

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) regulates surcharging and demands the merchant prove a surcharge is justified.

Furthermore, the ACCC says if there is no way for a consumer to pay without paying a surcharge – that is, they can’t pay by cash or cheque – then the business must include the surcharge in the displayed price.

Penalties for misuse

The ACCC can take merchants to court to enforce these regulations and there have been some examples of this in recent history.

In July 2021, Nine Entertainment paid penalties totalling $159,840, plus $450,000 redressing customers, for charging subscribers and advertisers excessive surcharges.

The ACCC specifies that the surcharge must not be more than it costs the merchant to use that payment type.

As guidance to the merchants, it also offers the average costs for different payment types: eftpos less than 0.5 per cent, Mastercard and Visa Debit 0.5 per cent – 1 per cent and Mastercard and Visa credit 1 per cent – 1.5 per cent.

However, despite the ACCC setting guidelines for the amounts that can be charged, many surcharges are above this guidance and in some cases more than 2.0 per cent for all cards.

Some merchants do charge different surcharging rates, depending on the cards they accept, be it eftpos, Mastercard or Visa. In theory, the surcharge rate is meant to be determined by the merchant service fee, which is negotiated between the merchant and their bank.

Larger merchants, such as the supermarkets, department stores and energy companies, can negotiate low rates (reportedly as low as one cent a transaction). But smaller merchants with less negotiating clout will have higher service fees.

The arrival of new payment players, such as Square and Stripe, has offered businesses an alternative banker of card payments, which can then use surcharging as part of their merchant service fees.

Surcharging overseas

The European Union already has a long-standing ban on surcharging, while in the United States, surcharging is illegal in some states.

Other countries, including the United Kingdom, have tried surcharging on card payments, only to abandon them as it was rorted by some merchants and became an unnecessary expense for consumers.

A statement released by the UK Treasury when it banned the practice in 2018 described surcharges as

Hidden charges for paying with a debit or credit card, which will help millions of UK consumers to avoid rip-off fees when spending their hard earned money.

What can you do about it?

Before surcharging was allowed by the Reserve Bank in January 2003, acceptance by merchants of payments was just another cost of doing business. And it seems many consumers have just accepted surcharges as part of their transactions.

There are ways to avoid them, the most obvious being to use cash. Using eftpos involves charges, but they are less than those imposed on credit and debit cards.

The Reserve Bank is working on implementing a so-called “least-cost routing” system that defaults to the lowest cost network when processing payments. Unfortunately, this is yet to be widely adopted by businesses.

Steve Worthington, Adjunct Professor, Swinburne University of Technology

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

What’s the most egregious extra fee you’ve been charged? Do we need stricter rules? Let us know in the comments section below.

Also read: Are credit cards perks and deals really worth it?

The Conversation
The Conversationhttps://theconversation.com/au/who-we-are
The Conversation Australia and New Zealand is a unique collaboration between academics and journalists that is the world’s leading publisher of research-based news and analysis.

5 COMMENTS

  1. I transferred money to my daughter, and was charged for transferring the money which made the purchase for essential household goods. The extra charge was made by NAB, so I am considering changing my bank, but which bank should I use to reduce these extra costs.

  2. I recall when Bankcard cam in during the 1970s. There was much consternation back then because merchants increased prices to factor in the additional costs of taking payment by Bankcard. Everybody paid the extra cost, even those using cash. Slowly people forgot that their prices already included the cost of electronic payment and surcharges started appearing. The irony is that merchants don’t want cash. It’s cheaper (and safer) for them to have EFT. No more counting. transporting and banking cash.

  3. Absolutely a rip off. Retailers automatically assume that payment is by credit card and tack on the surcharge. I always make them reverse the assumed payment as I pay cash. Trouble is so many retailers are now NOT ACCEPTING CASH, we really need some SMART GOVERNING politician to insist that payment can be CASH or CARD. I know, I know there are those that think it is only a few cents, but hullo those cents are better in my pocket thank you. I think we are really in trouble with these surcharges.

  4. Governments are to ‘hand in glove’ with businesses these days. They don’t want to get involved in making sure their constituents don’t get ripped off. Hence all the self/no regulation that has crept in over the last 20 years, resulting in exorbitant profits.
    To my mind most if not all politicians let things go in the hope that some business or other will give them a plum job when they lose their seats.
    Albanese is a joke as a Labor leader.
    It used to be that when Labor got re-elected most if not all of the draconian practices introduced by the Conservatives, got reversed. Not any more.
    An example is competition with the Banks, Health Funds and Power companies. They all behave the same, ripping people off right left and centre with exactly the same product offerings in different guises.
    It is just pretend competition, and the only way to fix it to protect the ‘ordinary person’ is to use progressive taxation, so those who are ‘raking it in ‘ are forced to give back to the society which they have impoverished.
    The other way of course is to Nationalize these sorts of industries, because privatisation has only meant duplicated administrations which the public has to pay for, and of course profits which just wouldn’t exist if governments, particularly those with a supposed social conscience, took control.
    And going back to this article, where is the banning if these sneaky fees; never mind some go to court convoluted legislation to pretend the government is doing something about it.
    Come on Peter Dutton, why don’t you make an issue/shout about something useful. !!

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