Reserve Bank of Australia surcharging standard

To ensure fairness, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has a surcharging standard in place to help businesses decide on how much they can surcharge.

A surcharge is an extra fee or charge that’s added on to the cost of goods or services above the quoted price. You can surcharge on transactions that are tapped, swiped or inserted.

A surcharge can be added to the cost of an item as a percentage of the price or a dollar figure. A surcharge is intended to cover the costs associated with running a merchant facility and can be added to a contactless or card-inserted transaction. 

Under the surcharging standard, customers using Visa, Mastercard, EFTPOS and American Express cards can’t be charged an amount higher than the cost of accepting that particular card scheme.

You don’t have to surcharge. However, if you do choose to surcharge, you need to ensure that your surcharging amounts are correct.

If you choose to surcharge, you’re required to use the most recent 12 months transaction percentages on your monthly merchant statement.  These will help you understand your Cost of Acceptance. If you have been with NAB for less than 12 months, you need to use the data you have and check again after 6 months and 12 months to ensure your surcharging amounts are correct.

You need to make sure the surcharge amount does not exceed your Cost of Acceptance. The RBA surcharging standard, opens in new window states that merchants can only pass on what it costs them to accept each type of card transaction. Surcharging more than your Cost of Acceptance may constitute ‘excessive surcharging’ and can be investigated by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC).

If you’re already surcharging, we recommend you review and amend these surcharges based on the Cost of Acceptance table provided in your statement.

If you have made the decision to surcharge you must disclose that to your customers. You must tell them what surcharges may apply before their transaction is completed, giving the customer the option not to proceed. 

It’s important your customers understand that the price they’ll be charged will be slightly different from the ticketed price. You can use the editable card surcharge table (PDF, 1MB), opens in new window  to display the surcharge for each transaction type.

The ACCC monitors to ensure merchants don’t surcharge in excess of their Cost of Acceptance and has been given new powers to enforce the surcharging standard. They will investigate complaints relating to excessive payment surcharges, and merchants will be required to provide information and documents about their costs of accepting card payments.

If the ACCC believes that a business has charged an excessive surcharge, they can issue an infringement notice. This means you may have to pay a penalty. They can also take court action against the merchant, seeking pecuniary penalties.

Refer to our user guides to set up surcharging:

NAB Ingenico EFTPOS terminal user guide (PDF, 5MB), opens in new window

Quest QT850 EFTPOS Terminal Guide (PDF, 1MB), opens in new window

You can change your surcharging amount each month if you want to. However, there's no need to do so, even if your business is seasonal. 

If you choose to surcharge, you’re required to use the most recent 12 months percentages, or the 12-month cost of acceptance from your June statement, which covers the financial year July to June. You also need to ensure that the surcharge for each card scheme doesn't exceed your Cost of Acceptance for that card scheme as advised on your statement, in addition to any other costs allowed under the RBA surcharging standard.

If you’re already surcharging, we recommend you review and amend the amounts based on the Cost of Acceptance table provided in your statement.

Cost of Acceptance is the cost to you as a merchant business for accepting a particular card type. RBA advises that surcharging costs can include:

• Fees and charges from schemes such as Visa, Mastercard, EFTPOS, American Express, JCB and more.
• Fees including terminal rental, stationery and minimum monthly merchant service fees.
• Fees including monthly access fees, any fees or charges paid to payment gateway providers and fees for fraud prevention.
• Specific fees charged for processing card transactions by schemes, such as international service assessments, cross-border fees, switching fees and fraud-related chargeback fees (this excludes the chargeback amount).

A cost of acceptance table can be found on your monthly merchant statement and contains:

1. A summary of the value of the transactions made by your customers.
2. The fees we’re charging you for those transactions.
3. The Cost of Acceptance, shown as a percentage.

Below is an example of the Cost of Acceptance table. NAB provides you with information for the current statement month, as well as the most recent 12-month period.

Statement month

Remember you can also add the other costs of acceptance listed under What is Cost of Acceptance above.

American Express issues their own statements that include the Cost of Acceptance calculation separately. Find out how to calculate your overall Cost of Acceptance if you receive more than one merchant statement.

If your online payment system has different scheme and card type categories, you need to contact your service provider to discuss this with them. If you do have different card scheme and type categories, you need to charge the lower of the fees for each card scheme from the Cost of Acceptance table. For example, if you apply the same surcharge amount for all Visa transactions, you need to use the lower of the Visa Credit and Visa Debit Cost of Acceptance

This occurs when there is either:

• not enough information to calculate a Cost of Acceptance
• not enough data to provide a realistic calculation, which means the calculation would be misleading from a surcharging perspective.

The Cost of Acceptance is calculated by dividing the value of the fees by the sales from the NAB Merchant Statement, to arrive at a percentage for each of the schemes. There are also additional fees reported on your statement such as terminal fees and imprinter fees, which aren't specific to any particular scheme. These are apportioned based on the value of sales processed for each scheme and card type.

We're unable to provide a formula to assist with the calculation, as it needs to reference each scheme and card type transaction.

If you receive more than one statement, for example one from a payment gateway and one from NAB, each statement has a separate Cost of Acceptance table.  

To calculate your total Cost of Acceptance, you need to add each statement’s Cost of Acceptance per scheme and card type. This gives you an overall Cost of Acceptance per scheme and card type.

Use this table if you receive more than one merchant statement:

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