The RBA Card Surcharge Ban: What It Means for Your Club From 1 October 2026

If your club currently adds a card processing fee at checkout — a Stripe fee, a "card surcharge," a percentage added when someone pays online — this affects you directly, and the deadline is closer than it feels: 1 October 2026.

From that date, the major card networks are removing surcharging from their scheme rules. In practice, that means the fee-at-checkout most clubs have gotten used to charging members won't be allowed to continue in its current form. This isn't a proposal or a discussion paper — the Reserve Bank of Australia's Conclusions Paper has confirmed it, and the card networks have already told merchants what's changing.

Here's what's actually happening, what you can still legitimately do, and what we're doing on our end to help.

What's actually changing

This is a scheme-rules change, not a new law. The RBA removed the twenty-year-old prohibition that used to stop card networks from banning surcharges. With that prohibition gone, the networks have moved:

• eftpos — no surcharging on debit or prepaid
• Visa — surcharging prohibited except where expressly permitted by law
• Mastercard — must not surcharge, or pass on any part of the merchant service fee, unless expressly permitted by law
• American Express — not RBA-regulated, but has independently removed surcharging from the same date

The practical effect: from 1 October, a club adding a card-only fee at checkout is in breach of its own agreement with its payment provider — not because of a new government law, but because the card networks themselves no longer allow it under their scheme rules.

One detail worth knowing: the trigger is the payment date, not the invoice date. A renewal invoice sent in September that gets paid by card on 3 October falls under the new rules, even though it was issued before the deadline. If your club runs scheduled renewals, anything paid on or after 1 October needs to be clean.

There's no exemption for clubs or not-for-profits

It's a reasonable assumption that a volunteer-run club charging a small processing fee to cover real costs would be treated differently to a large retailer. It isn't. The RBA has been explicit that not-for-profit organisations are not exempt from the removal of surcharging unless a specific card network's rules provide one — and none currently do.

What you can still legitimately do

The ban doesn't mean your club has to absorb payment processing costs with no options. There are three legitimate paths, and all three are commonly used:

1. Absorb the cost. Leave your membership price as-is and treat the processing cost as a normal cost of doing business — the same way you already treat postage, printing, or any other overhead. For smaller membership fees, the cost is often modest enough that this is the simplest option.

2. Build it into your price. If a $150 membership currently attracts a processing fee of a few dollars, the straightforward fix is a $153 membership price with no separate fee line at all. Every member pays the same amount regardless of how they pay. Nothing to disclose, nothing that varies by payment method.

3. Offer a discount for a cheaper payment method. You can advertise the full price and offer a discount for bank transfer or a similarly low-cost method — as long as the advertised price is the full price, the discount is disclosed upfront, and the discounted option isn't presented more prominently than the standard price.

What doesn't work: renaming the fee — "admin fee," "platform fee," "online payment fee" — while it still only applies to members who pay by card. The ACCC has been clear that relabelling a card-only fee doesn't change what it is.

The good news: payment processing is also getting cheaper

Alongside the surcharge ban, Stripe has announced lower Australian processing rates from the same date — domestic online payments dropping from 1.70% to 1.65% + 30c. It's a modest cut, not a windfall (a few cents on a typical membership payment), but it does partly offset the change, and it's worth knowing about when you're deciding how to adjust your pricing.

What SquadSpot is doing

We're updating the platform ahead of 1 October so that pass-through card fees are switched off automatically for every club, rather than leaving it as something each club has to remember to turn off themselves. We're also building a simple way to fold the fee into your membership price in one step, if that's the path your club prefers, so the change lands as a price update rather than a scramble.

We'll be in touch directly before the deadline with exactly what's changing for your club and what — if anything — you need to do. If you're currently using pass-through fees and want to get ahead of it now rather than wait, get in touch and we can talk through the options for your specific membership structure.

The bottom line

The pricing decision is yours — how you price your membership, and whether you absorb, reprice, or offer a payment-method discount, is entirely up to your club. What's changing is the mechanism: a fee that only applies to card payers, added at checkout, isn't going to be an option after 1 October.

This is general information, not advice for your specific situation — if your club has an accountant or bookkeeper, it's worth a quick conversation with them about which of the three options suits your circumstances best.

Sources: RBA Conclusions Paper — Surcharging, ACCC — Card surcharges