The countdown to October 1: your merchant payments checklist

Two months out. Whether the surcharge ban is a compliance chore or a few thousand dollars of annual savings depends entirely on what you do between now and 30 September. Here is the complete checklist, in order, with the time each step takes.

By mid-August — know your position (≈90 minutes)

☐ 1. Pull three months of merchant statements. Extract turnover, card mix, total fees → your effective rate (fees ÷ turnover). (20 min — see our statement guide.)

☐ 2. Identify your pricing model. Flat, interchange-linked, or surcharge-funded. If surcharge-funded (Shift4 Zero Cost, Tyro No Cost EFTPOS): your model ends 1 October — steps 5–7 are urgent, not optional. (5 min)

☐ 3. Model your post-October cost. Surcharge-model merchants: turnover × current surcharge rate = your absorbed baseline. Everyone else: your effective rate is your baseline. (10 min)

☐ 4. Run a card processing cost market comparison at your turnover and mix — rate + rental + fees, ranked. Screenshot your top three. (15 min)

By early September — decide and act (≈2 hours + lead time)

☐ 5. Get your provider's post-October position in writing. Surcharge-model merchants: demand the replacement offer. Everyone else: "How will the October interchange reductions apply to my account?" (15 min)

☐ 6. Negotiate or switch. Take your comparison screenshot to your provider's retention team; if they won't meet the market on card processing costs, start the switch. Leave lead time: terminal delivery, POS integration checks and staff familiarisation take 2–4 weeks — a switch started 28 September doesn't land by 1 October. (Call: 15 min. Switch: order now.)

☐ 7. Check your exit terms — notice period (30–60 days is common), equipment return conditions, any termination fee — and time your notice so old and new overlap for a few days of parallel running. (10 min)

By 30 September — compliance (≈1 hour)

☐ 8. Kill the surcharge at the terminal. Remove or reconfigure surcharge prompts on every device. If you're keeping a (still-legal) Amex-only surcharge, it must be network-specific — a blanket rule becomes illegal on eftpos/Visa/Mastercard [1]. If your terminal can't split by network, remove surcharging entirely.

☐ 9. Fix your signage and menus. "Card surcharge applies" signs, till stickers, website checkout notices, QR-order payment screens — all gone or rewritten by close of business 30 September.

☐ 10. Reprice deliberately, if you must. If you're absorbing a genuine new cost, a small, honest price adjustment beats margin erosion — industry bodies have warned against absorbing blindly [2]. Spread it across the menu; don't invent a "service fee" that only card payers somehow trigger — a disguised surcharge is still a surcharge.

☐ 11. Brief your staff. One line does it: "No card surcharges from October 1 — if a customer asks, prices now include card acceptance."

After 1 October — verify (≈15 minutes)

☐ 12. Audit your first two statements. Confirm any negotiated rate actually landed, no surcharge lines linger, and — if you're on interchange-linked pricing — the wholesale reductions are visible. If you switched, confirm the old account closed and rental stopped.

What this means for you

Twelve boxes, roughly five hours of total effort, most of it in August. The merchants who treat this as a strategic window — benchmark, pressure, switch if it pays — will carry lower acceptance costs into 2027 than the ones who treat it as paperwork. Same deadline, very different Octobers.

Start with box 4 — it takes 60 seconds: the major providers we track ranked by card processing costs at your volume. Compare now →

Provider details indicative, last verified July 2026 — verify with providers.