From the 1st of October 2026, you can no longer add a surcharge when a client taps their card at the front desk or pays a deposit to lock in a colour appointment online.

The Reserve Bank of Australia confirmed the change in its Conclusions Paper on 31 March 2026, and it is one of the biggest shifts to Australian payments in twenty years. If your checkout, booking widget or terminal currently adds a card fee, that line has to come off before October, whether it is a $45 fringe trim or a $280 balayage.

The good news is that this is a simpler system than the one it replaces, and the RBA is cutting the wholesale fees behind card payments at the same time. Here is what is actually changing, and what to do about it.

What is changing

From the 1st of October 2026, businesses cannot charge a surcharge on payments made with EFTPOS, Mastercard or Visa cards. That covers debit, prepaid and credit. American Express is not regulated by the RBA in the same way, but it has decided to remove surcharging from the same date.

The rule applies everywhere you take payments.

What’s vital is the date of payment. For example, if an invoice was issued in September but the client pays by card on or after the 1st of October, you are not allowed to surcharge.

What is not changing

The ban covers surcharges added because someone paid by card. It does not touch:

• Genuine booking fees or service fees that apply no matter how the client pays
• Cancellation and no-show fees
• Weekend or public holiday surcharges
• The fees your payment provider charges you for terminals, processing and gateway services

An important thing to note is that the ACCC has been clear that renaming a card surcharge as a “processing fee” or “admin fee” does not make it a different thing. If the fee only applies when a client pays by card, it is a surcharge, and calling it something else may be misleading conduct.

It’s worth flagging that for salons specifically, a genuine no-show or late cancellation fee, charged to a card on file under your stated policy, stays exactly as it is. It applies because a client didn’t show, not because they paid by card; therefore, it’s not included in the surcharging ban.

Does this affect you?

If you don’t surcharge, nothing changes at your checkout, and there’s no action required from you.

If you do surcharge, you need to ensure you stop adding this to your services before the 1st of October 2026. If you take deposits or pre-payments online, check your online payment settings, not just the terminal. A percentage added to a colour deposit or a package prepayment is also banned.

Suggestion: Work your card costs into your prices

If you have been passing the costs of your payment system onto your clients as surcharges, you now have a decision to make.

Should you raise your service pricing to cover these costs?

The ACCC has confirmed that businesses can recover card acceptance costs through their overall pricing. Its own published example uses a hair salon: a $60 haircut with a 1.0% card surcharge becomes $60.60 once the card cost is folded into the price.

Tips on how to figure out your price rise:

Pull the last twelve months of your merchant statements

• Work out your total card acceptance cost as a percentage of card turnover
• Apply that percentage across your service menu

A salon processing $400,000 a year in card payments at a 1.7% cost of acceptance is spending roughly $6,800 a year to accept cards. On a $150 colour service, that is about $2.55.

The maths scales down for barbershops too. A barber running $150,000 a year through the terminal at the same 1.7% rate is looking at roughly $2,550 a year in card costs, or about 68 cents on a $40 cut.

One thing to be careful about

You are allowed to raise your prices. You are not allowed to mislead clients about why.

The ACCC’s example continues: if the same salon lifts the haircut from $60 to $65 because energy and wages have also gone up, it cannot tell clients the increase is because of the surcharge change. That would be misleading, because card costs are only part of the story.

If you are doing a broader price review at the same time, say so plainly. Most clients will understand a general increase far better than a story that does not add up.

Your checklist before the 1st of October

• Find every place you surcharge, including the terminal at reception, a wireless terminal at the chair, any online booking links, deposit links, gift card sales, and invoices.
• Switch surcharging off in your software. In Shortcuts Fusion, this is a setting you need to turn off yourself before the1st of October. See the step-by-step guide.
• Confirm the changes with your payment provider. Some are disabling surcharge functionality entirely from that date. Ask what they are doing and when.
• Work out your real card acceptance cost from the last twelve months of your statements.
• Review your price list and decide what, if anything, moves across cuts, colour, treatments and packages.
• If you do update your prices, also update everything a client sees. Price lists, your website, booking pages, in-salon signage, or receipts.
• Brief your whole team, not just reception. Your stylists, colourists, barbers and therapists all take payment chair-side, so everyone should be informed.

Confused about the changes?

At Shortcuts, we have payments specialists on the team who can look at your current setup, work out what the change means for your numbers, and talk through your options, no matter who you are with today.

[Book a time to talk]

Regulatory sources:

Reserve Bank of Australia, FAQs: Removal of payment surcharges from 1st of October, 2026

Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman, Card surcharging ban

This article is general information, not legal or financial advice. For advice on your specific circumstances, speak with your accountant or payment provider.