EFTPOS fees explained
Card acceptance is priced in layers, and providers only advertise the top one. Here is the whole stack, in the order it lands on your statement.
What you are actually paying for
A merchant rate is not a single fee handed to a single company. It covers interchange (paid to the card issuer), scheme fees (paid to Visa, Mastercard or Eftpos), the acquirer's own processing cost, and then the cost of actually delivering you a working facility — the terminal, deployment, connectivity, support, compliance, fraud and risk management, AML obligations, and the provider's margin.
This matters because published interchange caps get misread. Seeing a 0.30% cap on consumer credit interchange does not mean a merchant should expect to pay 0.30%. Interchange is one input into a stack, not the price.
The fees you will see
Transaction rate
A percentage of each sale, sometimes with a fixed amount added per transaction. The fixed component is the one to watch if your average sale is small.
Monthly plan or terminal rental
Charged regardless of trade. Cheap at high turnover, punishing in a quiet month.
Terminal hardware
Bought outright, rented, or "free" — and free hardware is generally recovered through the rate or the contract length.
The ones that are easy to miss
- Minimum monthly service fees that top you up to a floor if you trade under it.
- Chargeback and dispute fees charged per event, win or lose.
- PCI compliance fees, sometimes billed as non-compliance penalties.
- Paper, SIM and connectivity charges on some terminal plans.
- Early termination fees where there is a lock-in contract.
Least cost routing
Most Australian debit cards are dual-network: they carry both an Eftpos logo and a Visa or Mastercard one. When a customer taps, the transaction can travel down either network, and they do not cost the merchant the same. Least cost routing sends it down whichever is cheaper for you.
It applies to eligible debit taps only — not credit, and not single-network cards. It is frequently not enabled by default, which means asking your provider directly is often the fastest saving available to a merchant.The full explanation is here.
FAQ
What is a normal EFTPOS fee in Australia?
There is no single normal rate. What a merchant pays depends on turnover, average transaction size, the plan structure and whether least cost routing is enabled. A rate that is good value for one business is poor value for another.
Is a flat-rate EFTPOS plan cheaper than an interchange-plus plan?
Flat rate is simpler and often cheaper for smaller merchants. Interchange-plus exposes the underlying wholesale cost and tends to favour higher-turnover merchants who can act on it. Neither is automatically cheaper.
Can I avoid EFTPOS fees by surcharging?
Surcharging passes the cost to the customer rather than removing it, and the rules on what you may surcharge are changing under the RBA reforms taking effect in 2026. A surcharge must not exceed your actual cost of acceptance.
Does least cost routing reduce my EFTPOS fees?
It can. Least cost routing sends eligible dual-network debit transactions down whichever network is cheaper for the merchant, usually Eftpos rather than Visa or Mastercard. It does not apply to credit cards or to single-network cards.