From tomorrow, there are new rules by the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) for surcharging. These are coming into effect for all businesses. If you are caught slapping excessive surcharges on credit card and debit card payments you face fines of thousands of dollars. So I do suggest that you check with your EFTPOS and credit card providers, write down in your diary what they say too.
What the government does not want you any more is charging a fixed fee for processing an electronic payment, although they will accept it in *some* circumstances. What they want is a percentage, something our system can do. First you need to do is review each electronic payment method to determine the cost percentage.
So say:
Eftpos $100,000, cost levied by the bank in the last 12 months on the EFTpos was $500, your extra fees were $200, then the percentage is ($500 + $200)/($100,000) = 0.7%
MasterCard credit was $150,000, cost levied by the bank in the last 12 months on this was $1500, your extra fees were $300, then the percentage is ($1500 + $300)/($150,000) = 1.2%
VISA credit was $200,000 turnover, cost levied by the bank in the last 12 months was $2000, your extra fees were $330, then the percentage is ($2000 + $330)/($200,000) = 1.2%
etc.
It does not affect most American Express, UnionPay, JCB, Diners Club and paypal as these are not Australian banks.
Furthermore, extra charges can be claimed, for example, merchant service fees, terminal fees, and any other fees incurred in processing card transactions but not the phone line for the terminal. If you pay extra insurance to cover VISA fraud, then you can claim that too. If you have extra charges, I suggest you check first before claiming them as the important point is that you need to justify your figures.
You can still keep your booking and service fee, but these need to be entered before the surcharge.
For details on how to handle this surcharging in our point of sale system, please click here.
