Many merchants in Australia are starting to surcharge card fees between 1% to 2% which consumers have to bear. Merchants increase their product prices due to inflation and operation costs which includes the card fees.

For example, a product used to cost $20 and due to inflation, merchant increases price to $22. Merchants saw the loophole in able to surcharge card fees and charge a surcharge say 1.5% which consumers have to bear. Hence customer pays a total of $22.33. Most merchants are charging the same surcharge on all cards, including debit cards, putting pressure on consumers. Merchants should only be allowed to increase the price of their products which would be enough to cover the card fees instead of having to surcharge customers these card fees. Moreover, this would push people back to using cash as they wouldn't have to pay for any surcharge using cash.

Payment companies in Australia are using this loophole to get merchants to surcharge to customers, offering free monthly Eftpos Terminal rental fees while they earn from the consumers through surcharging. Merchants gets greedy and starts pushing the card fees to customers by surcharging while also increasing the price of their products. Some merchants are even greedier by surcharging a fee of 1.5% on all transactions while their Payment companies are actually charging them a much lower %, making some money through the difference in %. These merchants are everywhere and although the RBA bans this practice for merchants to earn a surcharging difference, nothing was done.

BAN all cards surcharging through merchants! Many people are reverting back to cash and we will only go backwards as a society. To embrace technology and move forward with times, we will need to stop the exploitations of these Payment Companies and Merchants. RBA needs to stop Merchants transferring card surcharging to consumers.