The Card Surcharge Ban Won’t Stop at the Café Counter

From 1 October 2026, businesses will no longer be able to add card surcharges to eftpos, Mastercard, Visa or American Express payments.

Most of the conversation has focused on consumers. A 1.7% surcharge on a $30 avocado toast is 51 cents. No more annoying fee when you tap. Simple.

Except that 51 cents is only the final step in a much longer journey.

The Ban Applies to B2B Payments Too

One detail that has received far less attention is that business-to-business card payments are not automatically exempt.

Suppliers will still incur costs when customers pay by card. The RBA is reducing some payment fees, so this does not mean every wholesale price will suddenly rise by 1.7%. Some businesses will absorb the remaining cost, negotiate a better rate or encourage customers to pay another way.

Others will build it into their prices.

The surcharge has not necessarily disappeared. It has changed address.

Avo Toast Has a Supply Chain

A café does not buy “avocado toast”. It buys avocados, sourdough, butter, eggs, salt and plenty more.

If those suppliers recover their remaining card costs through higher wholesale prices, every ingredient becomes slightly more expensive. The bread maker may already be paying more for flour, salt, oil and packaging from its own suppliers.

Those costs flow into the sourdough price. Then into the café’s recipe cost. Then the café applies its margin and accounts for its own card acceptance costs.

The 51 cents at the register is only the visible end of the chain.

The Bigger Risk Is Stale Costing

This is not a story about businesses crying poor over another cost.

It is a story about how difficult it is to keep recipe costing accurate when small price changes arrive across dozens of suppliers and hundreds of ingredients.

Most food businesses do not have time to reopen every spreadsheet, update every input, find every recipe and sub-recipe it affects, then recalculate every margin.

So it happens later. Or not at all.

The business keeps selling at the same price while margin quietly slips away.

Follow the Cost Before It Becomes a Problem

With Supply’d ERP, supplier price changes flow through the recipes and sub-recipes that use them. You can see which products are affected, how much their margins have moved and where the increase came from—without rebuilding a maze of spreadsheets.

The surcharge ban may make the checkout simpler. Behind the scenes, however, food businesses will need a much clearer view of where those costs land.

Because 51 cents is not the real problem.

Not knowing what happened to your margin is.

Book a demo of Supply’d ERP to see how connected purchasing, recipe costing and margin reporting help you stay ahead of changing costs.