Home Driving Schools Card Surcharge Ban in Australia: What It Means for Driving Instructors

Card Surcharge Ban in Australia: What It Means for Driving Instructors

Australia’s card surcharge ban began 1 October 2026. What driving instructors can still charge, what a card fee costs per lesson, and how PayID and cash help.

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Picture of Author: Nirmit Shah
Author: Nirmit Shah

Since 1 October 2026, a learner who taps a card for a lesson pays the price on your booking page. A nationwide policy prohibits businesses from charging extra fees when a customer pays by card.

Only around 16% of Australian businesses were surcharging in 2024/25 (RBA), so most instructors never added one. It still matters: card payments have a cost, and not every booking needs one. That’s why OnTime Bookings, a driving school website builder, puts cash, PayID and bank transfer beside card on your booking site, with no processing fee on the first three. We made it convenient for our clients.

What the card surcharge ban says

On 31 March 2026, the Reserve Bank lifted its ban on card networks’ “no-surcharge” rules, and EFTPOS, Mastercard and Visa switched those rules on from 1 October 2026 for debit, prepaid and credit cards. American Express, UnionPay and PayPal removed surcharging too (RBA FAQs). It covers online bookings too, with no small-business exemption.

  • It isn’t a law. The networks enforce it through your payment provider’s merchant agreement, not the ACCC. The ACCC polices misleading pricing and warns that relabelling a card surcharge as another fee may be misleading conduct (ACCC).
  • Other fees are fine. A booking or late-cancellation fee that applies is not a surcharge. A disclosed cash or PayID discount is allowed too (more below).
  • Your fees should fall a little. The RBA also cut interchange caps on 1 October: consumer credit from 0.8% to 0.3%, debit from 10 to 8 cents per transaction (RBA). CommBank, for example, cut its single-rate fee from 1.10% to 0.99% (CommBank), and from 30 October 2026, networks and large banks must publish their fees, so compare providers.

What a card fee costs a driving school now

Take an $80 lesson paid by card through Stripe at its standard Australian rate of 1.65% plus 30 cents (Stripe): the fee is $1.62. At 25 lessons a week for 46 weeks, all by card, that’s about $1,860 a year, and a $750 ten-hour package costs $12.68 to get paid. Terminal plans often cost more: small merchants on single-rate plans pay around 1.4% of each sale (RBA).

Two choices, and they stack.

  1. Reprice. Round the $80 lesson to $82 and the card fee is covered. If the rise covers fuel or insurance, it is not a surcharge; the ACCC also treat this as misleading.
  2. Add cheaper ways to pay. PayID payments usually land in under a minute; the payer sees your business name before sending, and your ABN can be your PayID (Australian Payments Plus). Most banks charge nothing to receive them (Westpac states there are no fees for you or your customer: Westpac). Your learners already use it: 72% of 18 to 29-year-olds used PayID in the past year (RBA). Bank transfer and cash cost nothing either.

How OnTime Bookings handles it

OnTime Bookings designs a website for your driving school, where a learner picks cash, PayID, bank transfer or card options at checkout. PayID and transfer orders carry a unique reference and confirm once you mark the payment received. Part-payments are recorded in the admin panel: a $40 payment on an $80 lesson shows $40 outstanding.

Card payments run through your own Stripe account, with 0% commission from us. There’s no processing fee on cash, PayID or bank transfer, and GST is tracked per order for your BAS. Our driving school software comparison checks each platform for these options. See the payment features or book a demo.

Frequently asked questions

1. Is it illegal to charge a credit card surcharge in Australia now?

No law bans it, but since 1 October 2026 it breaks the card networks’ rules in your merchant agreement, and relabelling it risks a misleading-conduct claim under Australian Consumer Law.

Yes. The ACCC confirms it. Show the full price, make the discount clear before the learner books, and don’t display the discounted price more prominently.

Yes to both. There’s no exemption for sole traders, small businesses or not-for-profits, and a card payment made on or after 1 October 2026 can’t be surcharged even if the invoice was issued earlier.

Yes, if it applies no matter how the learner pays. A fee that only applies to card payments is a surcharge by another name.

  1. Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA). Review of Merchant Card Payment Costs and Surcharging, Conclusions Paper, Chapter 2: Surcharging. Accessed 27 October 2026.
    https://www.rba.gov.au/payments-and-infrastructure/review-of-retail-payments-regulation/2026-03/conclusions-paper/surcharging.html

  2. Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA). Conclusions Paper FAQs: Removal of Card Payment Surcharges from 1 October 2026. Accessed 27 October 2026.
    https://www.rba.gov.au/payments-and-infrastructure/review-of-retail-payments-regulation/2026-03/conclusions-paper/faqs/

  3. Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC). Card Surcharges (Business). Accessed 27 October 2026.
    https://www.accc.gov.au/business/pricing/card-surcharges

  4. Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA). Conclusions Paper, Chapter 3: Interchange Fees. Accessed 27 October 2026.
    https://www.rba.gov.au/payments-and-infrastructure/review-of-retail-payments-regulation/2026-03/conclusions-paper/interchange-fees.html

  5. Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA). Media Release 2026-10, 31 March 2026. Accessed 27 October 2026.
    https://www.rba.gov.au/media-releases/2026/mr-26-10.html

  6. Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CommBank). RBA Card Surcharge Reforms. Accessed 27 October 2026.
    https://www.commbank.com.au/business/payments/rba-card-surcharge-reforms.html

  7. Stripe. Pricing — Australia. Accessed 27 October 2026.
    https://stripe.com/au/pricing

  8. Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA). Conclusions Paper, Chapter 4: Competition in Card Acquiring Services. Accessed 27 October 2026.
    https://www.rba.gov.au/payments-and-infrastructure/review-of-retail-payments-regulation/2026-03/conclusions-paper/competition-in-card-acquiring-services.html

  9. Australian Payments Plus. PayID for Business. Accessed 27 October 2026.
    https://www.auspayplus.com.au/solutions/payid-for-business

  10. Westpac. PayID for Business. Accessed 27 October 2026.
    https://www.westpac.com.au/business-banking/online-banking/payid/

  11. Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA). Consumer Payment Behaviour in Australia (2025 Consumer Payments Survey). RBA Bulletin, May 2026. Accessed 27 October 2026.
    https://www.rba.gov.au/publications/bulletin/2026/may/consumer-payment-behaviour-in-australia.html

  12. OnTime Bookings. Payments for Driving Schools. Accessed 27 October 2026.
    https://www.ontimebookings.com.au/features/payments-for-driving-schools/

  13. OnTime Bookings. Pricing. Accessed 27 October 2026.
    https://www.ontimebookings.com.au/pricing/

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