Your wholesale card costs fall on 1 October. Will your provider pass it on?
By Dougal Anderson, Co-founder, Compayr · · 8 min
On 1 October 2026 the wholesale cost of accepting card payments falls for every payment provider in Australia. Whether any of that reaches your business depends almost entirely on one thing: how your plan is priced. On interchange-plus pricing, the reduction reaches you automatically. On a flat rate, it reaches you only if your provider chooses to cut its headline rate — and most have not said whether they will.
What actually changes
Alongside the end of surcharging on eftpos, Mastercard and Visa, the RBA is lowering the caps on interchange fees — the wholesale fee paid to the cardholder's bank on every transaction.
From 1 October 2026, for Australian-issued cards:
| Cap before | Cap from 1 Oct | |
|---|---|---|
| Personal credit (Mastercard/Visa) | 0.80% | 0.30% |
| Debit and prepaid | 0.20% | 0.16% |
| Commercial credit | 0.80% | 0.80% (unchanged) |
Foreign-issued cards follow later, with a 1.00% cap from 1 April 2027.
Interchange is the largest wholesale input in what you pay. When the cap falls, your provider's cost of serving you falls with it. What happens next is a pricing decision, not a regulatory one.
The distinction that decides whether you see any of it
Interchange-plus (also called cost-plus, IC+ or IC++) charges you the actual wholesale cost of each transaction — interchange, plus scheme fees — with a disclosed margin for your provider on top. When interchange falls, your bill falls. No negotiation, no announcement required.
Flat rate (blended) charges one percentage on every transaction regardless of card type. It buys simplicity: a debit tap and a premium credit card cost you the same. The trade-off is that the wholesale cost sits inside your provider's margin. When interchange falls, that saving lands with the provider unless they reprice.
Neither model is dishonest. Flat rate is genuinely simpler and, at low volumes, can be cheaper overall. But on 1 October the two models diverge in a way that matters, and most merchants have never been told which one they are on.
What this looks like in practice
CommBank has published both halves of this, which makes it a useful worked example.
For merchants on its Interchange Plus and Interchange Plus Plus plans, CommBank states it will pass the interchange changes through by automatically adjusting the interchange fees merchants pay.
For merchants on its flat-rate (Single Rate Per Transaction) plan, CommBank is instead reducing its headline Merchant Service Fee for in-store payments from 1.1% to 0.99% (inclusive of GST) from 1 October 2026, applied automatically to eligible existing customers. (CommBank newsroom, August 2026. Correct as at 5 September 2026.)
Same provider, same reform, two different mechanisms. One flows through automatically; the other required a commercial decision to cut the headline rate.
How to work out whether a cut is a full pass-through
You can estimate what the interchange reduction is worth on your own card mix. The saving depends on how much of your turnover is personal credit, because that is where the large cap reduction sits.
Take a merchant with a fairly typical mix of 70% debit, 27% credit and 3% international:
- Credit: 27% of turnover × 0.50 percentage points saved = 0.135pp
- Debit: 70% of turnover × 0.04 percentage points saved = 0.028pp
- International: no change until April 2027
- Estimated blended wholesale reduction ≈ 0.16pp (excluding GST)
Against that, CommBank's flat-rate cut of 1.1% to 0.99% inc GST is a reduction of about 0.10pp excluding GST — in the order of two-thirds of the estimated blended saving at that card mix.
Three caveats, and they matter. Interchange caps are maximums, not the rate charged on every transaction, so the actual wholesale saving is often smaller than the cap change implies. The result moves considerably with your card mix — a business taking mostly premium credit cards saves far more than one taking mostly debit. And providers carry other costs, including scheme fees, which are not falling. This is an estimate for orientation, not an audit of anyone's margin.
The point is not that a partial pass-through is wrong. It is that you can only have the conversation if you know roughly what the number should be.
What to do about it
1. Find out which pricing model you are on. It is on your merchant statement. If you see a single percentage applied to every transaction, you are on a flat rate. If you see interchange itemised separately from your provider's margin, you are on interchange-plus.
2. Compare your October statement with your September one. This is the simplest test available. If you are on interchange-plus, the interchange lines should be visibly lower. If you are on a flat rate, your rate either changed or it did not.
3. Ask your provider directly, before the deadline. Three questions worth putting in writing:
- Is my plan flat-rate or interchange-plus?
- What is my rate from 1 October, and how does it differ from today?
- If my rate is not changing, how is the interchange reduction being reflected in what I pay?
4. Know that the answers are becoming public. Under the RBA's new transparency requirements, acquirers will publish quarterly reports on merchant service fees and interchange pass-through rates, and merchant statements will carry standardised cost-of-acceptance information. CommBank has confirmed its first Interchange Pass-Through Rate report will cover October to December 2026. What has historically been opaque is about to be documented.
We are tracking this for the providers we compare
From 1 October we are maintaining a public record of what each major provider charged before the reform, what they charge after it, and whether the interchange reduction reached merchants — with a source link and a verification date against every entry. You can see it here: Interchange Pass-Through Tracker.
See what your provider charges now — compare providers at your own turnover and card mix. Compare now →
Not sure what you are paying? Upload a recent statement and we will work out your effective rate and compare it. Upload a statement →
Related reading: How the October reforms work · How we compare providers
About the author
Dougal Anderson is a co-founder of Compayr, with over 10 years scaling end-to-end payment companies in Australia. He can be reached at media@compayr.com.au.
Interchange cap figures are from the RBA's reforms taking effect 1 October 2026. CommBank pricing details are from CommBank's published newsroom announcements and merchant pages, August 2026. Figures are indicative estimates in Australian dollars; the blended calculation assumes a 70/27/3 card mix and interchange charged at the cap. Rates on Compayr are shown with the date they were last verified — always confirm current pricing directly with the provider. Compayr is not a financial adviser and this article is general information, not financial advice. Compayr may receive a referral fee from a provider when a merchant switches through us; this does not affect our rankings, which are ordered on estimated card acceptance cost.
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