The Reserve Bank of Australia handed down its long-awaited conclusions paper last month and framed the decision as a win for everyday Australians. From October 1, surcharges on eftpos, Mastercard and Visa payments will be banned. Simple. Clean. Transparent.
Tell that to your travel agent.
The Australian Travel Industry Association (ATIA) has fired back at the RBA’s reasoning, warning that the policy fundamentally misunderstands how travel businesses operate and that the cost will not disappear. It will just become invisible.
“The RBA says this is net-neutral,” said ATIA CEO Dean Long. “There is no way it can be for travel.”
The central bank’s logic runs something like this: lower the interchange fees merchants pay, ban surcharging, and everyone ends up better off. But Long says interchange is only one slice of what it costs a travel business to accept a payment. Once scheme fees and acquirer fees are added on top, the total cost of processing a card transaction in the travel sector sits well above one per cent of the transaction value and that figure has not budged.
“What has changed is that we can no longer recover it transparently,” he said. “It will go into base prices and every customer will pay it, whether they use a credit card or not.”
In other words, the surcharge is not going away. It is just going underground.
A Cost That Cannot Be Hidden
ATIA is warning members that prices across airfares, hotel bookings, tours and agent service fees will need to rise by at least one per cent from October 1 to absorb costs that can no longer be recovered at point of sale. For international card payments, that figure sits closer to 1.5 per cent.
Given that typical travel transactions range from $6,400 to $10,000 and are often paid 70 to 100 days in advance, the cumulative impact on both businesses and travellers is meaningful.
The industry’s frustration runs deeper than the numbers. The RBA justified its decision in part on the basis that only 16 per cent of Australian businesses currently surcharge. ATIA says that figure is simply wrong.
“If you bought a coffee today, you paid a surcharge,” Long said. “If you booked a flight or a holiday, you paid a surcharge. The businesses that don’t surcharge, supermarkets, pharmacies, lottery organisations, are the exception, not the rule. The 16 per cent figure has been used to justify a policy that will cost Australian consumers, and Australia’s small businesses, real money.”
The data, ATIA argues, was derived from the very institutions that stand to benefit most from the decision: Visa, Mastercard and the big four banks.
What It Means For Agents
The scale of concern across the travel trade was made plain this week when more than 700 travel professionals registered for an ATIA webinar on surcharging changes, the largest turnout in the association’s history.
Corporate travel management companies are among the most exposed. Corporate card acceptance carries a higher interchange cap under the new arrangements and those costs cannot easily be avoided for businesses servicing corporate clients. Luxury leisure is under similar pressure, with high-value bookings more likely to be paid via premium credit cards where acceptance costs are higher.
The October deadline may feel distant, but industry experts are urging agents not to wait. The time to review merchant facilities, renegotiate payment provider arrangements and decide how costs will be absorbed or redistributed is now, not September.
ATIA has also flagged that the RBA intends further consultation in mid-2026 on whether to extend regulation to mobile wallets, buy now, pay later services and e-commerce platforms, signalling that broader changes to how Australians pay for travel may still be to come.
For an industry that fought hard through the pandemic to prove its value, another financial headwind delivered by domestic policy rather than a global crisis is a bitter pill.
The surcharge may soon be gone from your invoice. But as every travel agent knows, costs do not disappear. They just turn up somewhere else.
For practical tips on preparing your business for the October changes, see: Top Tips From Agent Briefing On RBA Surcharge Ban.
