EFTPOS fees in Australia: what small shops pay and how much margin they cost

The big providers' published flat rates for card payments in Australia sit between 0.79% and 1.6% of each sale: 0.79% at Westpac, 0.99% at CommBank (plus terminal rental), 1.4% at Zeller and 1.6% at Square. Since 1 October 2026 you can't pass that on as a card surcharge, so it comes straight out of your gross profit. On an item you sell for $50 plus GST that cost you $30, a 1.6% fee takes 80c of your $20 margin — 4% of it.

The rest of this guide uses the same numbers to show what each way of paying costs you, what a month of fees adds up to, why your payouts come in under your takings, and how to find the rate you're really paying.

What do card payments cost a small shop?

These are the rates providers published as of October 2026. Flat (single-rate) plans charge the same percentage on every card. Custom or cost-plus plans charge a different rate for each card type and aren't published. Your merchant agreement and statements are what count.

Most flat card rates are quoted including GST: Zeller and CommBank say so on their pricing pages, and Square issues monthly tax invoices for the GST inside its fees, so Square's 1.6% is what actually leaves your account. Stripe adds GST on top of its fees unless your agreement says otherwise. Check your provider's tax invoice, and if GST is added on top, multiply the quoted rate by 1.1.

Terminal rental is part of the cost too. $29.50 a month on $10,000 of card sales adds about 0.3%, so a 0.99% plan costs about 1.3% all up.

Merchant fees come out of your margin, not your sales

A 1.6% fee sounds small because it's measured against the sale. But your shop runs on what's left after the cost of the goods, and that's where the fee comes from.

Take an item you sell for $50 plus GST ($55 at the till) that costs you $30. Your gross profit is $20, a 40% margin:

The last row comes from one formula: fee as a share of gross profit = fee rate ÷ gross margin. Here that's 1.6% ÷ 40% = 4%. The thinner your margin, the bigger the bite:

A convenience store or bottle shop working on a 20% margin gives up 8% of its gross profit to a 1.6% fee. A gift shop or clothing store on 50% to 60% feels less than half of that.

A fixed fee per transaction weighs most on small sales. Stripe Terminal's 1.65% + 10c, with GST added, is about 4% of a $5 coffee but about 2% of a $50 sale. If most of your sales are small, compare providers on your average sale, not the headline percentage.

What a month of fees looks like

A month of fees isn't one rate times your turnover. Each payment method has its own rate, cash costs nothing, and the expensive methods count for more than their share of sales. Here's a shop on Square that takes $38,000 in a month:

Afterpay is 8% of this shop's takings but about 30% of its fees. If the shop is registered for GST, it claims 1/11 back ($62.24), so the fees really cost $622.36 a month, or about $7,470 a year. Put in your own takings and rates to get your number.

Why your payouts are smaller than your takings

Your POS records what the customer paid. Your provider pays out what's left after its fee, so the two never match, and the gap is your merchant fees.

• Record sales at the full amount the customer paid, and record merchant fees as a separate expense. Your sales figures then stay right when customers switch from cash to card, and you can see what the fees cost.
• Payouts take time. CommBank settles card sales made before 9:30 pm AEST into a CommBank business account the same day. Zeller settles nightly into a Zeller Account and the next business day into other banks. Square pays out as soon as the next day, or instantly for 1.95%. With a next-business-day payout, weekend takings arrive on Monday.
• A refund doesn't always give the fee back. Square and Stripe both keep the processing fee on the original payment when you refund it. Bank plans set this in your merchant agreement.
• Disputes cost extra: CommBank charges $30 per chargeback, and Stripe $25 per dispute, plus another $25 if you contest it yourself (refunded if you win).

Can you still add a surcharge for card payments?

No. From 1 October 2026, eftpos, Mastercard and Visa ban surcharges on their credit, debit and prepaid cards, including cards issued overseas, and American Express, UnionPay and PayPal have dropped surcharging too. The RBA made the change possible and the card networks enforce it. Most large providers planned to switch surcharging off on their terminals by that date.

Charges that apply however the customer pays, such as a weekend or public holiday surcharge, aren't affected. A fee that applies only to some payment methods is probably a card surcharge, whatever you call it. You can still offer a discount for paying a cheaper way.

The ban covers cards. The RBA doesn't regulate surcharges on other payment methods, such as buy now, pay later, so check your provider's agreement and the ACCC's pricing guidance before adding one.

That leaves your prices as the place to recover card costs. If cards and phone wallets are 85% of your takings at 1.4%, fees cost about 1.2% of sales, so prices about 1.2% higher cover them.

The same date brought lower caps on interchange, the fee your provider pays the card issuer: 0.3% for consumer credit cards, with lower caps on debit too. Several banks cut their flat rates: Westpac from 1.20% to 0.79%, and CommBank from 1.1% to 0.99%. Square said its pricing would not change. If you haven't compared plans since October, now is the time.

Is a payment method worth accepting? Work out the break-even

A payment method costs you its fee and earns you the sales you'd lose without it. The break-even uses the same formula: the share of that method's sales that must be extra business = fee rate ÷ gross margin.

Take Afterpay at 6.6% on a 40% margin: 6.6% ÷ 40% = 16.5%. About one in six Afterpay sales has to be one you wouldn't otherwise have made, from a bigger basket or a customer who'd have walked out, for the fees to pay for themselves. The 33c fixed fee pushes that slightly higher.

Cards are an easy call by comparison. At 1.4% on a 40% margin, only 3.5% of card sales need to depend on you taking cards, and most in-person payments in Australia are now made by card.

How do you find the rate you're really paying?

Your merchant statement has the real number: divide the month's fees, terminal rental included, by your card takings. That's your effective rate, GST included. If your statement splits fees by card type, do it for each one and you'll see which costs you most.

Then compare. In March 2026 the RBA found that small merchants on single-rate plans paid 1.4% of card sales on average, against 0.9% on unblended (cost-plus) plans, yet only 19% of small merchants were on one. The largest acquirers have to publish their average fees by merchant size every quarter, starting by 30 October 2026. From April 2027, statements must split domestic from foreign cards and card-present from card-not-present (online and phone) payments, which makes like-for-like quotes easier.

On a cost-plus plan, ask whether least-cost routing is on. It sends tap payments on dual-network debit cards through whichever of the card's two networks costs you less, which for many merchants is eftpos.

Lots of overseas visitors? Foreign cards usually cost more (Stripe Terminal charges 3.5% + 10c, plus GST), and the RBA's cap on their interchange only starts on 1 April 2027.

Let your POS do the sums

Australia doesn't require a certified cash register, so the POS you use is your choice. What the ATO does require is a record of every sale, kept for five years, and software that hides or deletes sales has been illegal since October 2018.

If you run your counter on an iPad, DingPOS can estimate the fees for you. In Settings → Payment Methods, give each payment method its processing fee: a percentage, a fixed amount per transaction, or both (for Afterpay through Square, 6.6% and $0.33). Use the GST-inclusive rate. The Payment Methods card on Stats then shows the estimated fee and net received for each method. DingPOS doesn't process payments or read your provider's statements, so these figures are estimates from the rates you enter, and your statement shows the actual amount.

Setup is covered in Can DingPOS track card and mobile payment fees?. Fee tracking is on the Standard plan and up (compare them on Pricing), and you can try everything free for 30 days.