Understanding merchant surcharging

A merchant surcharge is when you charge a fee for accepting card payments (including when you choose to pass on DEFT card fees to your payers).

It’s important to know that you can’t charge a surcharge which is greater than your cost of acceptance. This is determined by the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) which has a surcharging standard that applies to card payments.

Please note that if you don’t currently surcharge and don’t intend to start, this standard will not impact you. Please visit the RBA or ACCC websites for more information. 

Your DEFT tax invoice contains a cost of acceptance table, with your cost of card acceptance shown as a percentage.

You can also view our current card fees in the DEFT Biller Agency Agreement.

As DEFT doesn’t offer physical merchant terminals and doesn’t charge fees for processing chargeback disputes, your average cost of acceptance is simply your DEFT card fees.

When you ask us to pass card fees onto your payers, we automatically charge the full amount of your fee for accepting card payments. This means you don’t need to worry about calculating the surcharge amount.

DEFT only allows you to pass on your full card fee – there's no option to set your own surcharge.