From 1 October, it will be illegal to charge a card processing fee. Here’s how your practice can prepare.
Practices which haven’t already considered the impact of EFTPOS machine surcharges on their bottom line have less than one month to raise prices or potentially be caught unawares.
Earlier this year, the Reserve Bank of Australia announced plans to remove surcharging for all designated card networks from 1 October.
Businesses will still incur additional costs when accepting card payments, but they won’t be able to pass this cost along to the consumer as a line item on the receipt.
On a practical level, this means that businesses like GP clinics will still be paying fees when a patient pays using EFTPOS, Mastercard or Visa, but they won’t be able to pass this along to the patient directly.
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In many cases, the option to add a merchant fee will simply disappear from the payment terminals on 1 October.
Businesses that introduce an extra “handling” or “service” fee which only applies to card payments will be penalised.
Practices are still allowed to increase overall fees, so long as they do not discriminate based on payment method.
GP and Business For Doctors founder Dr April Armstrong tells The Medical Republic that clinics which have not already done so can use the coming weeks to look at their banking fees and potentially review pricing.
“We’ve increased our fees by 10% on the 1st of July, mostly because of the increase in minimum wages and our rent increase,” she says.
“We knew about the increases in the EFTPOS machines not being able to pass on the fees, but also our utility costs have gone up, and our consumable ordering has got a fuel levy on the deliveries now. We’ve seen a shift on almost everything within general practice, and I’m sure other people’s practices [have experienced that] as well.
“There has been a significant increase in running costs.
“When I speak to my colleagues in other businesses who are service industry business, a lot of them have put their prices up by 15% to 20%, so 10% is actually quite small compared to other areas.”
