Card surcharges in Australia from 1 October 2026

From 1 October 2026, Australian businesses cannot add a surcharge to eftpos, Visa, Mastercard, or American Express card payments. The card networks enforce the rule. It applies to the date the customer pays, not the date you sent the invoice.

If customers pay with Pay Now in SortScape

This applies when you use SortScape’s built-in invoicing and Pay Now (Stripe). See Taking online payments for invoices.

From midnight on 1 October 2026 in your account’s time zone:

• SortScape stops adding your credit card surcharge. You do not need to change a setting.
• Pay Now still works. The customer pays the invoice total without the surcharge.
• Invoices you already sent are included. If the customer pays on or after that date, they are not charged the surcharge, even if the invoice went out earlier.
• A payment made before that date still includes the surcharge you had configured.
• On Settings → Invoicing → Online payments, the surcharge field is removed. The percentage you had set is kept on the page for your records, and it is no longer added at checkout.

To stop the surcharge before 1 October, open that same page and set Credit card surcharge to 0%.

If a customer opens Pay Now just before the cutoff and does not finish, they may need to start checkout again. A payment completed on or after 1 October does not include the surcharge.

Processing fees still apply

Stopping the surcharge does not remove the cost of taking the card payment.

• Stripe still deducts its card processing fee before the payout reaches your bank.
• SortScape still deducts its 0.5% platform fee on Pay Now payments.

SortScape has not changed those rates as part of this rule. Your payout will be smaller than the invoice total by those fees, and you can no longer add a surcharge on the invoice to recover them.

How you cover that cost is up to you. Some businesses leave prices as they are. Some adjust prices. SortScape does not change your visit or invoice prices for you. If you are unsure, talk to your accountant or bookkeeper.

If you invoice through Xero or QuickBooks

SortScape does not take the card payment in that case. Surcharges and card fees are handled in Xero or QuickBooks, not on Settings → Invoicing → Online payments.

Xero told Australian businesses that use Xero’s Stripe pricing that, from 1 October 2026:

• Surcharges stop automatically. Card payments keep working. The processing fee comes off the invoice, including invoices already sent that are still unpaid.
• The option to pass on processing fees is removed from Xero’s online payment settings.
• Xero’s domestic card fee for those accounts changes from 1.8% + A$0.30 to 1.75% + A$0.30 (GST included). Xero applies that automatically. Nothing in SortScape changes it.

Questions about that fee, or about a surcharge on a Xero invoice, need to go to Xero. SortScape cannot see or edit Xero’s card pricing.

Other countries

The 1 October 2026 cutoff is for card payments in Australia. If your SortScape payment account is in another country, the credit card surcharge setting stays as it is.