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Payments Published 17 September 2026

Card surcharges end on 1 October. Direct debit was never in scope.

If your studio passes card fees on to families, that stops in under a fortnight. Here is what the rule actually says, what it leaves alone, and what to change before you raise term 4 invoices.

On 1 October 2026 it becomes against the card scheme rules for an Australian business to add a surcharge to a card payment. That covers debit, credit and prepaid cards across eftpos, Mastercard and Visa, with American Express, UnionPay and PayPal removing surcharges from the same date. It applies in person and online.

The Reserve Bank's Payments System Board reached this position in its Review of Merchant Card Payment Costs and Surcharging, published in March 2026. Its reasoning was that surcharging had stopped doing the job it was introduced to do: the rules were complex, the surcharge was often disclosed poorly or too late, and most people simply wanted it to stop.

The part studios keep missing

The ban is about cards. The RBA's own guidance states the changes only apply to surcharges added because a customer pays by card, and that they do not cover BPAY, direct debit or bank transfer. If your fee schedule treats those as one thing, it is about to be wrong in a way families will notice.

What this costs a dance studio, concretely

Take a studio with 142 enrolled families and roughly $248,400 of term income. If a fifth of those families pay by card and the studio has been passing on something in the order of 1.5 per cent, the surcharge revenue that disappears on 1 October is a four-figure sum per term. It does not vanish as a cost. It moves onto the studio's side of the ledger unless the fee itself changes.

There are only three honest responses, and it is worth being clear-eyed about which one you are choosing:

  • Absorb the cost, and accept a slightly thinner term.
  • Raise fees so the cost sits inside the headline price, which is legal and transparent, but it is a fee rise and should be announced as one.
  • Move families onto a payment method the ban does not touch, which for most studios means direct debit from a bank account.

Most studios will do some of all three. The third is the one Nixie already had built, not because anyone anticipated this rule, but because direct debit was always the cheapest way to collect a term fee from a household that has three children and one bank account.

How Nixie handles it

Every term fee in Nixie runs through Ezidebit. When a family enrols they choose an account to debit or a card to charge, and that choice is held as a token rather than as card details in the studio's own system. The difference between those two choices is what 1 October changes.

Where a term fee goes, before and after 1 October 2026 A term fee raised in Nixie splits by how the family chose to pay. A bank account debit is not affected by the surcharge ban and carries no surcharge either side of the date. A card payment carried a surcharge before 1 October 2026 and cannot carry one after, so that cost moves to the studio unless the fee changes. Term fee raised one invoice per family Bank account debit outside the ban no surcharge either side Unchanged on 1 October family pays the fee, studio keeps it Card payment covered by the ban debit, credit and prepaid Before 1 Oct surcharge shown to the family From 1 Oct cost sits with the studio The split is the family’s own choice at enrolment. Nixie holds it as a token, not as card details.
A term fee follows the payment method the family chose at enrolment. Only the lower path changes on 1 October.

What the studio actually does

In Nixie the surcharge is a rate set once in payments settings, and it is shown to the family as its own line before they confirm, never folded into the fee. Setting that rate to zero removes it from every future invoice without touching the fee itself, which keeps the change auditable: the fee did not move, the surcharge stopped.

For the families still on cards, the enrolment form and the family portal both offer a bank account instead. Moving is a form, not a conversation, and the token changes without the term fee or the instalment plan being rebuilt.

What is not changing, and what we do not know yet

The ban does not make card acceptance free. Studios still pay merchant fees; the RBA is lowering the interchange caps that sit underneath those fees from the same date, which should reduce what small businesses pay to accept cards, though the saving reaches a studio through its payment provider rather than directly.

Two things worth watching. The RBA does not regulate merchants, so the rule reaches a studio through its acquirer and the card networks, and individual networks set their own exemptions. And a second tranche of changes, covering foreign-issued cards and further cost transparency, starts on 1 April 2027.

If you are not sure what your studio currently charges, it is on your merchant statement, and it is worth looking before the first term 4 invoice goes out rather than after.

Australian government sources

This is a plain reading of a published rule, not financial or legal advice. Your acquirer and your accountant know your studio's numbers. Written by Jason Roberts. Back to updates