Here's something worth knowing before the next round of eftpos pitches lands on your desk: when an acquirer quotes you "0.3%," they might mean two completely different things. And the difference is the gap between what the operator quotes their team after the meeting and what shows up on the statement.
It came up last week in a chat with the operations manager of a multi-venue pub group. He'd been quoted what he was told was a 0.3% rate on a new eftpos deal — by any read, an excellent number. When we sat down and walked through the actual structure together, the 0.3% turned out to be the markup on top of wholesale interchange, not the all-in cost. Across his venues, the true effective rate landed closer to 0.5–0.7% depending on card mix and venue location — still a competitive number, but well above what he'd taken away from the meeting.
He'd done everything you're meant to do — asked for a rate, got a clear number back. The pitch was just structured in a way that buried what that number actually meant. With the October 2026 card surcharge ban locking in and acquirers across Australia rolling out repriced offers from the end of July, this kind of pitch is going to come up a lot. Here's how to read them properly — and why now is exactly the wrong moment to lock anything in.
What Interchange-Plus Pricing Actually Is
"Interchange-plus" — sometimes written as "Int++" or "IC+" — is one of the three main ways eftpos rates are structured in Australia. The other two are blended (one flat percentage on everything) and tiered (different rates for different transaction types).
With interchange-plus, your bill is built from two parts:
- Interchange — the wholesale fee the card networks (Visa, Mastercard, eftpos) charge for moving the transaction. This goes to the customer's bank, not your provider. It varies by card type — debit is cheap, credit is more expensive, premium and international cards are more expensive again.
- The "plus" margin — what your acquirer adds on top to make their money. This is the bit that's negotiable.
Done honestly, this is one of the fairest ways to be charged. You see exactly what's interchange, exactly what's the provider's cut, and you can compare apples with apples. Done dishonestly — by quoting the "plus" as if it were the all-in rate — it lets a provider make a 1.5% deal sound like a 0.3% deal.
What 0.3% Int++ Actually Costs a Pub
Australian interchange is capped by the RBA, which keeps debit costs particularly low. Pubs lean heavily on contactless debit, so the maths actually works out reasonably well — but it's still meaningfully above 0.3%. Here's what 0.3% Int++ looks like across the typical card categories:
- Domestic eftpos debit (tap and go) — interchange around 0.05–0.15% + 0.3% margin = roughly 0.35–0.45% all-in
- Domestic Visa/Mastercard debit — interchange around 0.15–0.25% + 0.3% margin = roughly 0.45–0.55% all-in
- Domestic credit card, standard — interchange around 0.5–0.6% + 0.3% margin = roughly 0.8–0.9% all-in
- Premium, rewards and business credit cards — interchange around 1.2–1.5% + 0.3% margin = roughly 1.5–1.8% all-in
- International cards — typically 1.5%+ interchange plus cross-border fees on top
For a typical suburban pub — heavy on debit, modest credit, low business-card mix — that weighted out to an effective all-in rate of around 0.5–0.6%. For a city pub with a heavier mix of business and premium cards, it nudges up closer to 0.6–0.7%. Compare that with the "0.3%" the ops team walked away believing, and you can see how the gap between the quoted number and the real cost grows the more business volume goes through your venue.
It's not a bad deal — 0.5–0.7% all-in is genuinely competitive. The issue is the gap between what gets quoted in the meeting and what gets settled on the statement. Operators make decisions on the first number; they live with the second one.
The shortcut for any rate quote: If a provider quotes you a percentage and you can't immediately tell whether it's all-in or just the markup, ask them point-blank: "Is that the total cost of the transaction, or is interchange charged separately on top?" The answer tells you everything.
Why This Is Happening Right Now
Three big things have changed in the Australian payments market over the last few months, and they're all converging at the end of July through October:
- The card surcharge ban kicks in 1 October 2026. Debit and credit card surcharges on the eftpos, Visa and Mastercard networks are off the table. Anything you currently pass on becomes your cost to absorb.
- Interchange caps drop on the same day. The RBA's lowering interchange caps on debit and credit, which means acquirers' input costs drop too. The good ones will pass this through. The not-so-good ones will quietly keep the difference.
- Acquirers are scrambling for hospitality and retail clients. Most are launching new pricing in late July to win operators who are about to feel the surcharge ban for the first time. New pricing means new conversations — and a flood of pitches.
That's the backdrop. Lots of pitches landing right now, but most of them are based on the acquirer's best guess at where pricing will land — they don't actually know yet. The honest pricing rolls out in late July when the lay of the land is clear. Anyone trying to lock you in before then is selling you on numbers they themselves aren't sure about.
The Three Quote Formats You'll See — and What Each One Means
1. Blended (or flat) rate
One percentage applied to all card transactions. "1.4% across the board." Genuinely useful for an operator who wants predictable, easy-to-reconcile fees — you know exactly what each transaction costs and your monthly bill is simple to forecast. The trade-off is the rate is set once and doesn't move when wholesale costs change. Worth understanding what that means for October — see the next section.
2. Tiered pricing
Different rates for different transaction types — "Qualified," "Mid-Qualified," "Non-Qualified," or some equivalent. The trick here is that almost all of your premium and international transactions get downgraded into the most expensive tier, even when they shouldn't be. Effective rate is usually well above the headline.
3. Interchange-plus (Int++)
The interchange wholesale cost is passed through at cost, plus a transparent provider margin on top. Done properly, this is usually the cheapest and most transparent structure for any business doing reasonable card volume. Done dishonestly, the margin gets quoted as if it were the all-in rate.
Why You Probably Shouldn't Sign Anything Before End of July
Here's the bit nobody pitching you right now is going to tell you: the acquirers don't actually know what their costs will look like after October yet. The RBA's confirmed the new interchange caps are coming, the surcharge ban is coming, but the actual numbers and downstream operational changes are still being modelled. Pricing is being released in late July precisely because that's when the dust settles enough for them to commit.
What's happening between now and July is acquirers trying to lock operators in on pricing that's mostly a guess — pricing they're keen to set before the transparency from the new rules makes their margins easier to compare. If you sign now, you're locking in their best estimate of where they think they need to land to keep you. If you wait until late July or early August, you're choosing from pricing they actually understand the economics of — usually with terms that are visibly better.
The right move for almost any operator right now is the same: get a real read on what your current setup is costing you, get yourself in a position to move quickly when the new pricing drops, and don't sign a multi-year deal before you've seen what late-July pricing looks like. Anyone telling you to sign immediately to "lock in" a rate is selling, not advising.
Why Blended Pricing Could Cost You in October — Even If You Like It Now
This one's important and almost nobody is talking about it. When the RBA's interchange caps drop on 1 October 2026, the wholesale cost of accepting cards goes down for every acquirer in Australia. The question is whether you see any of that saving.
If you're on Int++ pricing, you do — automatically. Your bill is "wholesale interchange + a fixed margin." Wholesale drops, your bill drops. The margin doesn't change but the interchange portion does, and the savings flow straight through to you with no renegotiation needed.
If you're on a blended rate, you don't. Your bill is "1.4% on everything," regardless of what the underlying interchange is doing. The wholesale cost goes down, the acquirer's margin quietly widens, and the saving stays with them unless you specifically renegotiate. Blended pricing is convenient and predictable — that's the upside, and for some operators it's worth it. But signing a blended deal in May 2026 means signing away your share of October's interchange savings before they've even arrived.
That's not a reason to avoid blended forever. It is a reason to think twice about signing one in the next few months without understanding the structural give-up. Put differently: if you're going to sign anything before October, Int++ usually keeps the upside on your side of the table.
How to Compare Quotes Properly
If you're reviewing pitches over the next few months, here's the short list:
- Ask for the rate format in writing. "Is this blended, tiered or interchange-plus?"
- If it's interchange-plus, ask for the margin AND a worked example of the all-in cost on your actual card mix.
- Get a quote on your real statement data, not on a generic template. Provider must base it on the cards your customers actually use.
- Ask about every line item that isn't the per-transaction rate — terminal rental, monthly service fee, PCI fee, statement fee, settlement fee, international card surcharge, chargeback fee, authorisation fee.
- Ask about least-cost routing. If it's not enabled by default, push for it — it can knock real money off contactless debit costs.
- Calculate the effective rate on the proposal: total estimated monthly cost ÷ monthly volume. That's the only number worth comparing across providers.
Our guide to reading your eftpos statement walks through how to do this calculation on your existing setup so you've got a true baseline.
Why It Matters Most for Hospitality (Right Now)
Hospitality operators have, on average, been the heaviest surchargers in the country. A lot of pubs, restaurants and bars have been recovering credit card costs via surcharge for years. From October, that's gone — and from that day on, every basis point on your processing rate sits on your P&L instead of the customer's bill.
The opportunity in the next few months isn't to sign the first pitch that lands. It's the opposite. Get a proper read on what your current setup is actually costing you now, build a relationship with someone who can shop the market when the real pricing drops in late July, and be ready to move quickly when the genuinely good repriced deals arrive. The operators who do that will land the deals worth signing. The operators who lock in pre-July pricing will spend the next two years watching their neighbours pay less.
Our Honest Take
We're a broker. We don't sell terminals, we don't get paid until our clients switch, and we work with 20+ providers across the Australian market. There are very good acquirers out there who don't need to bury the maths to compete — those are the ones we'll be pointing operators toward when the late-July pricing lands.
Between now and then, the right play for almost every operator we speak to is the same. Don't sign anything new yet. Get a proper read on what your current setup costs you. Make sure you understand what's blended versus Int++. Be ready to move when the real pricing drops. We'll do the legwork on all of it — pull your statements apart, sit on the new offers as they come out, and bring you the genuinely competitive ones in a format you can compare side by side.
Free, no obligation. Forward us a recent statement or a pitch you've already had — we'll come back with a one-page read on what it actually means.
Get a Real Read on Your Quote
Whether you've already had a pitch from an acquirer or you're about to start the conversation, twenty minutes with us before you sign is twenty minutes well spent.
Book your free consultation here or call us on 1800 595 340.