{"id":646472,"date":"2026-10-06T12:50:08","date_gmt":"2026-10-06T12:50:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/646472\/"},"modified":"2026-10-06T12:50:08","modified_gmt":"2026-10-06T12:50:08","slug":"cafes-hike-coffee-prices-1-5-after-credit-card-surcharge-ban-capital-brief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/646472\/","title":{"rendered":"Cafes hike coffee prices 1.5% after credit card surcharge ban \u2014 Capital Brief"},"content":{"rendered":"

The news: An informal survey of 1,500 cafes found 17% lifted their coffee prices in October, with an average increase of 49 cents, prompted in part by the ban on card payment surcharges.<\/p>\n

Small Flat White<\/a>, a website built by That Automation Agency founder Christopher Drake, uses automated calling to survey cafes on coffee prices.<\/p>\n

It found 262 of 1,511 cafes had lifted their prices since the previous survey in September after losing the card surcharge.<\/p>\n

Cafe owners said they typically absorb rising costs for a while before raising prices, usually by 50 cents. Milk, coffee beans, wages and rent all contributed to price increases, but the loss of the surcharge was the tipping point for many.<\/p>\n

While a number of cafes raised prices, the majority held steady and 4% even cut their prices in a bid to boost volumes. This resulted in an average increase of just 1.5% across the 1,511 cafes surveyed, coincidentally similar to the now-defunct card surcharge.<\/p>\n

The context: The Reserve Bank of Australia announced in March<\/a> that it would stop merchants from adding surcharges to card transactions from 1 October.<\/p>\n

Removing surcharges on debit and credit cards would mean consumers only pay the sticker price of purchases, it said.<\/p>\n

The central bank said this would end the $1.6 billion in annual surcharging fees charged to consumers, although much of the cost would be passed on through higher sticker prices.<\/p>\n

Merchants had often charged surcharges of 0.5% to 1.5% for paying with a credit or debit card, Reuters<\/a> reported.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The news: An informal survey of 1,500 cafes found 17% lifted their coffee prices in October, with an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":646473,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[228070,72,113,61,60,30473,4269],"class_list":["post-646472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-australian-politics","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-rba","tag-regulation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=646472"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646472\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/646473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=646472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=646472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=646472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}