Australia's Card Surcharge Ban: What Magento Stores Must Change

From 1 October 2026, Australian merchants can no longer add a card surcharge to eftpos, Mastercard or Visa payments, on debit, prepaid or credit. If your Magento checkout adds a percentage or a flat fee when someone pays by card, that line has to come off before then. Most stores that surcharge do it through a payment fee extension or a gateway setting, not through Magento core.

What changes on 1 October 2026?

The Reserve Bank of Australia is removing surcharging on the card networks it designates: eftpos, Mastercard and Visa. That covers debit, prepaid and credit cards on those networks. American Express is not RBA-regulated but has said it will drop surcharging on the same date.

Two things move together. Surcharging goes, and the interchange fees that banks and payment providers charge merchants come down, which is meant to lower the underlying cost of accepting cards rather than simply shifting it onto you. The RBA's own estimate is that the package saves consumers and businesses up to $1.8 billion a year.

You are still allowed to recover the cost. You just have to do it in the price on the page, not as a line added after the customer has chosen how to pay. The ACCC's guidance on how prices are displayed still applies to whatever you land on.

Does this apply to your store?

It applies if you take payment from customers in Australia on those networks. It is not limited to a business type or a turnover threshold, and there is no version of Magento that exempts you.

One timing detail catches B2B and quote-driven stores: an invoice issued before October with a payment date after the change cannot carry a surcharge once the change is in effect. If you raise invoices with 30 or 60 day terms, the invoices you send in September are already inside the window.

Where do Magento stores actually add a card surcharge?

Magento 2 has no built-in payment surcharge feature, which is the first thing to understand. If a fee is being added, something you installed is adding it, and there are only a few places it can live.

• A payment fee extension. Amasty, Mirasvit, MageComp, MageWorx and several free modules all ship a checkout fee that can be set per payment method, as a percentage or a fixed amount. This is the most common source by a distance.
• The payment method's own settings. Some gateway integrations carry a surcharge or fee field of their own, configured under Stores > Configuration > Sales > Payment Methods alongside the credentials.
• A custom total. An agency-built total model that adds a line to the order. It will not appear in any extension marketplace list, so the only way to find it is to look at a real order's totals.
• A handling fee on a shipping method. Not strictly a card surcharge, but worth checking while you are in there, because it is often the thing merchants are actually thinking of.

How do you check whether your store is charging one?

Do the checkout test first, because it is the only check that reflects what a customer sees. Put an item in the cart and step through checkout with each payment method in turn, comparing the order total each time. If the total moves when the payment method changes, you have a surcharge.

Then confirm where it comes from. Two queries settle it quickly.

List anything installed with a fee or surcharge in its name:

bin/magento module:status | grep -iE 'fee|surcharge|extrafee'

Then look for the configuration that switched it on, including any custom total nobody documented:

SELECT scope, scope_id, path, value FROM core_config_data
WHERE path LIKE '%surcharge%' OR path LIKE '%payment%fee%';

Check the scope column rather than assuming a single answer. A fee turned off at default scope can still be on for one store view, which is exactly how an Australian store view keeps surcharging after someone believes they removed it.

Last, open a recent paid order in the admin and read the totals block. Any line between subtotal and grand total that is not shipping or tax is the fee, under whatever label the extension gave it.

What should you do instead?

You have three options, and only the first two survive the change.

Build the cost into your prices. Work out your blended cost of acceptance across the methods you take, then move prices to cover it. On a catalogue of any size this is a repricing job, not a checkout setting, so start it before October rather than in the last fortnight.

Discount the cheaper methods. A discount for paying by bank transfer or account credit is still allowed. It gets you the same steer without the banned line item, and it reads better to customers than a penalty did.

Absorb it and watch your margin. Viable on high-margin lines, painful on thin ones. If you take this route, know your real per-order margin before and after rather than guessing, because a two percent fee on a nine percent margin product is a fifth of the profit.

What is not banned

The change is narrower than the headlines suggest. Weekend and public holiday surcharges are not covered. Booking fees and service fees are not covered. Cards on networks outside the designated set may sit outside it too, though the practical value of surcharging one obscure network is close to nil.

None of that is an invitation to relabel a card surcharge as a service fee. A fee that appears only when a card is chosen is a card surcharge whatever the label says, and the label is the first thing a regulator reads.

A short plan for September

1. Run the checkout test on every payment method, on every Australian store view.
2. Identify the extension or setting adding the fee, and note the scope it is set at.
3. Decide between repricing, discounting alternatives, or absorbing, and model the margin either way.
4. Turn the fee off on a date you choose, before 1 October, so you are not doing it under pressure.
5. Check invoices already issued with terms that run past the change.
6. Update any checkout copy, terms page or FAQ that mentions a card fee.

FAQ

When exactly does the Australian card surcharge ban start?

1 October 2026. Until then the current surcharging rules stand, so a fee you charge in September is not retrospectively a problem. What matters is that it is gone on the day, including on any store view you might have forgotten.

Can I still charge more for credit card payments in Magento?

Not on eftpos, Mastercard or Visa, and not on American Express once it aligns on the same date. You can price the cost in, or discount the methods that cost you less, but you cannot add a line at checkout because the customer chose a card.

Does Magento 2 have a built-in surcharge setting to turn off?

No. Magento 2 core has no payment surcharge feature. Any fee on your checkout comes from an installed extension, a gateway integration's own settings, or a custom total written for your store, so removing it means finding which of the three it is.

What happens to invoices issued before October with later payment dates?

A surcharge cannot be applied to those payments once the change is in effect, even though the invoice predates it. If you invoice on terms, review anything raised from now on and strip the fee from documents that will be paid in October or later.

Are all payment fees banned, or only card surcharges?

Only surcharges on the designated card networks. Weekend surcharges, public holiday surcharges, booking fees and service fees are outside the change. A fee that only appears when a card is selected is a card surcharge regardless of what it is called on the invoice.

Next steps

Run the checkout test this week. It takes ten minutes and it is the difference between knowing and assuming, and plenty of merchants who are sure they never set one up find a fee an agency added years ago.

If you land on absorbing the cost, get your real margin per order in front of you first. ProfitEasy reports profit per order after fees, so you can see which lines can carry a two percent hit and which cannot, and the profit per order guide covers how the calculation is put together.

While you are in payment configuration, two related reads: orders paid but showing pending payment, and the Magento 2 quick setup check for the settings worth confirming at the same time.