From 1 October 2026, card surcharges are banned in Australia. If you’re currently surcharging, you lose the ability to recover card processing fees at the point of sale. If you’re not, you’ve been absorbing those fees the whole time.
Either way, October forces a question most merchants haven’t had to answer directly yet: what would it look like to reduce your dependence on card networks altogether?
Real-time payments cut card network fees out entirely. The surcharge ban is a good moment to act on economics that already stack up.
What the surcharge ban actually covers
From October, surcharges on debit, prepaid and credit cards will be banned across the board. At the same time, the RBA is also reducing interchange caps, which cuts what card networks charge merchants collectively by around $910 million per year. That’s real money, and it’s a genuine win for merchants processing card volume.
However, card processing fees don’t disappear. The interchange cap reforms reduce them, but they still eat into your margin on every card transaction. The difference is that from October, you can’t pass them on.
If you’re currently surcharging, you’re absorbing a cost you’ve been recovering from customers for years. If you’ve never surcharged, you’re still paying a fee on every card transaction that quietly chips away at what you actually keep.
Either way, the fee is yours to carry. The ban just makes that more visible. The merchants who will feel it the least are the ones who are starting to shift away from cards.
The case for real-time payments
PayID and PayTo run on Australia’s New Payments Platform, a bank-to-bank infrastructure that bypasses card networks entirely. Money moves from the customer’s bank directly to yours in seconds. No interchange fee. No card network margin. Transaction costs are projected to fall to around four cents per transaction, a fraction of what card processing costs at any meaningful volume.
More than 34 million PayIDs are registered in Australia. Over 160+ million transactions run through the NPP platform every month (Source: Australian Payments Plus). This isn’t emerging infrastructure. It’s widely adopted and working at scale.
The cost difference isn’t marginal either. For merchants processing significant card volume, it compounds as revenue grows. And unlike fee reductions from interchange cap reforms, the savings on real-time payments are structural. They don’t depend on what regulators do next.
The surcharge ban is the trigger to act on something that already makes financial sense.
Hello Clever’s plans are built for this moment
We restructured our pricing plans with October’s update in mind. Real-time payment rates are meaningfully cheaper than card rates across every tier, and both improve as you move up. As your business grows, the economics get better with it.
Essentials suits smaller merchants who want to start accepting real-time payments without a monthly fee. No upfront cost, and no complexity to get live.
Pro is the natural next step as your business scales. You get better rates on both real-time and card payments, and for most merchants at this level, the savings on real-time transactions and overall rates more than cover the monthly fee. You also get Clever AI Data Analyst, dedicated support, co-marketing services and more inclusions that make sense as your operations grow.
Enterprise is for merchants processing large volumes, or for businesses operating outside of Australia. Pricing and rates are tailored to your business. Get in touch directly and we’ll work out what makes sense for you.
Whichever plan fits where your business is today, the principle is the same: the more volume you shift to real-time payments, the better the cost advantage.
Make the move to Hello Clever now
The surcharge ban is a good moment to take stock of your payment mix. The merchants who come out of October in the strongest position will be the ones who shifted more volume to real-time payments. Removing a surcharge checkbox is one step. Changing your payment mix is what actually moves the margin.
Real-time payments has always been at the core of what Hello Clever does. If you’re weighing your options ahead of October, choose a plan that suits where your business is and get started today.
See Hello Clever’s plans and get started today
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