Australia\u2019s sweeping card surcharge ban has scrapped extra checkout fees on retail purchases, including coffees, clothes and groceries, with businesses warning higher prices could eat into shoppers\u2019 savings.<\/p>\n
Thursday\u2019s ban covers Visa, Mastercard, eftpos and American Express payments. The Reserve Bank of Australia estimates consumers paid $1.6 billion a year in surcharges on Visa, Mastercard and eftpos.<\/p>\n
Bayswater cafe owner Rob Strahan said absorbing card fees would threaten The Oarhouse, which he runs with his wife Nic on the Swan River.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s absolutely not savings because the bank charges are still there. So either I absorb it and I go broke, or I pass it on,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The Reserve Bank expects shoppers to pay less overall as lower processing costs flow through to prices. It forecasts about $910 million in annual reductions in merchants\u2019 costs once domestic and foreign-card fee changes are in place.<\/p>\n
Canstar data insights director Sally Tindall welcomed clearer checkout pricing.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe big win here is certainty. If the price on the shelf says $100, consumers should be able to pay $100 without a surprise fee appearing at the checkout,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
At The Oarhouse, a 12-ounce coffee has risen from $6 to $6.50.<\/p>\n
Mr Strahan said the ban helped prompt the increase after two years without a price change. He said supplier costs had recently risen about 20 per cent, while staff had received three pay rises since the last increase.<\/p>\n
Including the cafe\u2019s previous 1.8 per cent card surcharge, that coffee cost about $6.11. A card customer now pays about 39\u00a2 more, while someone paying cash faces the full 50\u00a2 increase.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow the beauty of being able to pass on the surcharge was that if you paid cash, you weren\u2019t penalised, and if you paid with a card, then you knew that fee was yours,\u201d Mr Strahan said.<\/p>\n
The cafe absorbed about $15,000 in card fees in its first year before charging customers separately, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe live in a largely cashless society, so not accepting card payments is not a realistic option for most businesses,\u201d Chamber of Commerce and Industry WA chief executive Will Golsby said.<\/p>\n
Mr Strahan\u2019s online notice explaining the price rise has attracted thousands of views.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe comments have been largely very positive,\u201d he said, acknowledging some complaints.<\/p>\n
Darkstar Coffee assistant manager Marcus Cozza has been speaking to cafe owners across the wholesaler\u2019s WA network, which stretches from Exmouth to Albany and throughout metropolitan Perth.<\/p>\n
Some had added 50\u00a2 to coffees, while others were absorbing the fees, he said.<\/p>\n
Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief executive Andrew McKellar said operators had used surcharges to recover merchant fees, warning the ban was \u201cpushing up prices and hurting small business\u201d.<\/p>\n
Darkstar, which also runs a cafe and sells equipment, had already built payment costs into its prices.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor us, we\u2019re not going to put the price up because it\u2019s kind of integrated already,\u201d Mr Cozza said.<\/p>\n
The Reserve Bank estimates about 16 per cent of merchants previously surcharged and expects businesses already absorbing fees to benefit from lower processing costs.<\/p>\n
Mr Cozza feared rising menu prices would deter customers, reducing trade for cafes and the wholesalers supplying them.<\/p>\n
He had urged cafe owners to contact their payment providers and negotiate lower rates, and planned to do the same for Darkstar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australia\u2019s sweeping card surcharge ban has scrapped extra checkout fees on retail purchases, including coffees, clothes and groceries,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":912388,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[64,63,99,44,5216],"class_list":["post-912387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-business","tag-news","tag-retail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/912387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=912387"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/912387\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/912388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=912387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=912387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=912387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}