Visa welcomes Government decision to limit card surcharging

10/20/2015

Sydney – Visa has today welcomed the Turnbull Coalition Government’s announcement that it will legislate to ban unfair card surcharges that are greater than the cost of merchants accepting payment by card.

“Visa supports action on surcharging and in particular the Government’s plans to introduce reasonable cost limits on the level of surcharging for card transactions,” said Stephen Karpin, Group Country Manager for Visa in Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific.

“The average merchant fee for a Visa transaction is approximately 0.83 per cent , which highlights that much of the merchant surcharging in place today is excessive. Visa’s consistent view is that excessive surcharging is anti-consumer and reduces the migration to efficient, fast and secure electronic payments.”

Visa has been working with merchants and financial institutions to reduce excessive surcharging since the Reserve Bank of Australia released new guidelines in March 2013, limiting surcharging to the merchant’s reasonable cost of card acceptance.

Mr Karpin said, “Without an enforcement mechanism in place, there has been little change. We welcome the move announced today.”
Visa also supports the government’s appointment of the ACCC to oversee compliance with the surcharging rules.

“We believe that enforcement by a consumer agency is needed to reduce the current high levels of surcharging by some merchants,” said Mr Karpin.  “We look forward to working with the Government and ACCC as they continue to work towards reducing excessive surcharging in Australia.”

 

About Visa

Visa Inc. is a global payments technology company that connects consumers, businesses, financial institutions, and governments in more than 200 countries and territories to fast, secure and reliable electronic payments. We operate one of the world’s most advanced processing networks — VisaNet — that is capable of handling more than 56,000 transaction messages a second, with fraud protection for consumers and assured payment for merchants. Visa is not a bank and does not issue cards, extend credit or set rates and fees for consumers. Visa’s innovations, however, enable its financial institution customers to offer consumers more choices: pay now with debit, ahead of time with prepaid or later with credit products. For more information, visit www.visa.com.au, visacorporateau.tumblr.com and @VisaNewsAU. For more information visit www.visa.com.au and @VisaNewsAU.

Media contact:
Jillian Friant
02 9253 8811 or 0450 739 035
[email protected]