A beloved Melbourne cafe is closing on 1 August. Here's the part every merchant should pay attention to.

Two Franks, the Coburg cafe and general store run by sisters Angie Markou and Chryssie Swarbrick, announced to its 18,000-strong Instagram community last week that it will trade for the last time on Saturday 1 August. SmartCompany has since spoken with both founders about why. The reason wasn't one thing. It was everything, arriving at once — and one item on that list has a date on it, applies to nearly every merchant in the country, and is the only one you can actually do something about before it lands.

What the owners said

Two Franks opened in 2023 in a century-old former butcher shop, across the road from the house the sisters grew up in. It became exactly the kind of business a high street is built around.

In announcing the closure, the founders pointed not to a single catastrophe but to a pile of them: the cost of coffee, milk, rent, electricity, insurance and packaging all climbing at once. Rising wages and superannuation obligations — which they were careful to say their staff deserve — landing on the same P&L. Software subscriptions and council rates creeping up alongside. And, on the horizon, the card surcharging ban that from 1 October stops cafes passing card payment costs to customers.

Swarbrick's summary of the problem was that each individual increase could have been absorbed on its own. What broke the business was the timing — speaking to SmartCompany, she described the problem as "so many changes coming in at once". Her point to policymakers was that nobody weighing up one new cost seems to be counting the others already landing.

The response told its own story. As SmartCompany reported, operators around Melbourne replied publicly with versions of the same message: costs through the roof, conditions harder than COVID, owners working more hours and paying themselves less — or not at all. This was not one cafe having a bad year.

Let's be accurate about the surcharge ban's role

It would be easy — and wrong — to write this up as "the surcharge ban closed a beloved cafe." It didn't. By the owners' own account, the ban was one item on a long list, and not the largest. Anyone telling you otherwise is selling something.

But here's why it deserves separate attention from every merchant reading this, and it has nothing to do with blame:

Almost everything else on that list is outside your control. You cannot negotiate the price of milk. You cannot opt out of council rates, or award wages, or your insurance renewal. When those go up, you absorb them or you reprice.

Card acceptance cost is different. It is negotiable, comparable and switchable — and most merchants have never tested theirs. The RBA found fewer than one in ten Australian businesses switched payment provider in a year. That's not because nine in ten are on great deals. It's because payment costs are opaque, statements are hard to read, and there's never an obvious moment to look.

October is that moment, forced on everyone at once. Which makes card acceptance the one line on the Two Franks list that a merchant reading this today can still change the shape of before 1 October.

The mechanic, in plain terms

From 1 October 2026, surcharging on eftpos, Mastercard and Visa is banned under the card schemes’ rules, following the RBA’s reforms. If you currently add a surcharge at the terminal, that cost doesn't disappear — it moves from your customers' receipts onto your P&L.

For a cafe turning over $30,000 a month in card payments on a plan surcharging 1.5%, that's roughly $450 a month — about $5,400 a year — appearing as a brand-new cost line that didn't exist in September. Nothing about the business changed. The bill just changed address.

If you're on a "zero cost" or "no cost" EFTPOS plan — the ones where your monthly merchant fee reads close to $0 — that's precisely the model that ends. The $0 was never free; your customers were paying it.

And the merchants most exposed are the ones least likely to have modelled it, because their statements have shown a comfortable $0 for years.

What to look out for, before October

Five things worth an hour of your time this month:

1. Know your effective rate. Total fees ÷ card turnover, from your last three statements. Not the rate on your signup letter — the real one, including rental, monthly fees and minimums. It's almost always higher than owners expect.
2. Work out whether you're surcharging, and at what rate. That percentage is the best available estimate of what you'll absorb from 1 October.
3. Get your provider's post-October position in writing. Especially on surcharge-funded plans. "We'll be in touch closer to the date" is not a plan.
4. Compare on card processing costs, not headline rate. A 1.0% rate with a $27 terminal rental can beat or lose to a 1.4% rate with no fixed fees — it depends entirely on your volume. Headline rates hide this.
5. Leave time. Terminal delivery, POS integration checks and staff familiarisation take two to four weeks. A switch started in late September doesn't land by 1 October.

Why we built this

Compayr exists because of the gap between those five steps and how hard the market makes them. Most merchants can't easily find out what they're paying, can't compare it against the market without three sales calls, and have no straightforward place to check whether a provider's offer is competitive.

So we built one: enter your turnover and card mix, and see the major Australian providers we track ranked by estimated card acceptance cost at your actual volume — terminal rental and hardware shown separately, figures labelled with their GST basis, run entirely by you. Every rate carries the date we verified it and a link to check it yourself. We earn a referral fee if you switch through us, and it never changes the ranking, which is ordered purely on lowest estimated card acceptance cost.

We can't do anything about the price of milk. We can make sure that when a merchant is stacking up their costs the way the Two Franks founders described, the card acceptance line is one they've actually tested rather than one they've simply inherited.

To Angie and Chryssie — thank you for being open about the numbers behind a small business for three years. That honesty has almost certainly helped other operators more than they'll ever tell you.

Find out what you'd really pay. Enter your turnover and see the major providers we track ranked by estimated card acceptance cost — in about 60 seconds. Compare my rate →

On a "zero cost" or surcharge plan? Work out your post-October bill →

Sources: the closure was announced by the Two Franks founders via their Instagram account in July 2026. The founders' comments on rising costs and the cumulative pressure on hospitality operators were given in interviews with SmartCompany, reported by David Adams on 22 July 2026 — read the original report at smartcompany.com.au. Compayr's analysis of what the surcharge ban means for merchants is our own. Provider rates on Compayr are indicative, last verified as shown on each listing — always confirm directly with the provider. This article is general information, not financial advice.