A decision-led guide to pricing, margin and traveller experience from 1 October 2026.

From 1 October 2026, businesses accepting eftpos, Mastercard and Visa payments in Australia will be subject to new card-network rules that prevent surcharges on credit, debit and prepaid card payments. 

For multi-day travel companies, the key question is not simply how to switch off a surcharge. It is:

How should card acceptance costs be incorporated into your pricing without creating unnecessary administration, reducing margin more than necessary or confusing travellers?

There is no single answer for every travel business. Your best approach will depend on your margins, booking values, payment mix, existing departures and how much operational complexity your team can comfortably manage.

In the webinar, we reviewed three strategies:

1. Absorb the costs
2. Reprice your trips
3. Use a mixed approach

It also covers the features available in YouLi to support you and the decisions you should make before 1 October.

Important: This article provides general information and practical product guidance. It is not legal advice. Review your proposed approach with your own Australian legal adviser and confirm applicable requirements with your payment service provider and card networks.

What is changing on 1 October 2026?

From 1 October 2026, eftpos, Mastercard and Visa will introduce no-surcharge rules for payments made using their credit, debit and prepaid cards. American Express has independently announced the removal of surcharging as well.

This means businesses will no longer be able to add an extra fee (a surcharge) when the traveller selects to pay by card.

As shown in this snapshot from the webinar, you can no longer have a headline price of $2,000, and then a final checkout price of $2,034 (where there is a $34 surcharge).

A card-related charge does not become compliant merely because it is renamed a “service fee”, “handling fee”, “transaction fee” or “convenience fee”. If the fee only applies to particular card payment methods, it may still be treated as a card surcharge.

However, the changes do not prevent businesses from:

• reflecting card acceptance costs in their overall prices
• offering discounts for selected alternative payment methods
• charging genuine booking or service fees that are not triggered by the customer’s choice to pay by card

The Reserve Bank of Australia confirms that card costs may be reflected in overall business pricing and that businesses may encourage alternative payment methods by offering discounts rather than surcharges.

The simple (and compliant) pricing principle

Travellers should be able to understand the amount they are committing to pay before reaching the final payment step.

For example, a traveller should not see:

If card is the standard or unavoidable way to purchase at that stage, the displayed price should instead reflect the amount the traveller can actually pay, subject to the applicable price-display rules.

In YouLi, that means reviewing the price displayed across your website embed, trip page, package selection and payment experience so that the traveller does not encounter an unexpected card-specific fee at checkout.

In this snapshot from the webinar, we see from the embedded card price, to the Trip Page price at the top to the invoice, the price remains clear and up front (including the $34 cost of the payment)

The wins for travel businesses

Win 1: Some card processing costs are decreasing

The RBA is introducing lower interchange fee caps for domestic card transactions from 1 October 2026. It is also introducing a cap on interchange fees for foreign cards from 1 April 2027. These reforms are intended to reduce payment costs, particularly for smaller businesses.

We shared the Stripe pricing changes in the webinar, you can review them from Stripe directly.

Businesses on negotiated blended pricing do not receive the same change, while businesses on custom interchange-plus pricing will see the interchange rate cuts passed on directly. Confirm your actual rate directly with Stripe or other payment provider.

The international card fee reduction may be particularly valuable for Australian travel businesses with a high proportion of overseas travellers.

Win 2: You can rethink your pricing more broadly

Previously, a card surcharge was limited by the cost of accepting the relevant payment type. Once card costs are incorporated into your overall package pricing rather than imposed as a card surcharge, you can review the full cost of delivering the booking.

That review might include:

• This is an opportunity to improve the way you calculate trip prices rather than simply adding the cost of the payment transaction on a card network, as there are also technology fees and labour costs that could be recouped.

• Any genuine booking or service fee should be structured and described consistently, rather than being activated only when the traveller chooses a card.
• On the webinar we suggested potentially a 2-3% "convenience fee" and will be rolling out a feature soon to support this implementation.
  

   

Win 3: Payment pricing should become easier to compare

Under the broader payment reforms, eftpos, Mastercard, Visa and large acquirers will be required to publish fee information. Merchant statements will also provide more standardised information to help businesses understand their costs and obtain comparable quotes.

This may be an opportunity to negotiate a better rate based on those that are published on other networks.

Three Compliance Strategies Compared

Option 1: Absorb the card costs

Under the absorb strategy, you turn off card surcharging and leave currently advertised trip prices unchanged. A trip advertised at A$2,000 remains A$2,000 throughout the booking and payment process.

Best for

• you want to prioritise simplicity
• you have existing trips with many confirmed travellers that are only part paid
• you have packages with enough margin to accommodate payment costs
• you're concerned that changing an already advertised price could create customer enquiries

Benefits

• simplest traveller experience
• minimal pricing communication required
• less administration for your team
• existing bookings and newly booked travellers can remain on the same package price

Trade-offs

• loss of margin

How to implement it in YouLi

1. Identify trips that currently have surcharging enabled.
2. Turn the surcharge off on each affected trip.
3. If you want to adopt the strategy across all trips, contact YouLi Support to request assistance identifying affected trips and switching them off.
4. Review late fees under Account → Payments, because payment surcharges may previously have applied to those amounts as well.
5. Update templates so newly created trips do not inherit a surcharge setting.

NOTE: YouLi will not automatically switch off surcharging for every customer because each business needs to choose its own pricing and communication approach.

Option 2: Reprice your trips

Under the reprice strategy, you calculate the expected payment and service costs, incorporate them into the trip price, and then turn off the separate card surcharge.

For example:

• old package price: A$2,000
• former 1.7% surcharge price: A$2,034
• new advertised package price could be A$2,034, but could also be: A$2,040 

Best for

• businesses with tight margins
• high-value trips
• businesses receiving a high proportion of card payments (especially international)
• trips with few existing bookings
• teams prepared to perform a structured pricing review

Benefits

• protects more of your margin
• gives you control over the final displayed price
• lets you use clean, rounded package prices
• creates an opportunity to account for the broader cost of delivering an online booking experience
• ensures future travellers see a consistent price throughout the purchasing journey

Trade-offs

• advertised prices will increase
• repricing multiple packages, departures and add-ons can take time
• existing travellers may need to retain their original agreed pricing
• your team will need a clear policy for packages, add-ons and line items

Handling existing bookings in YouLi

When you change a package price that already has bookings, YouLi can prompt you to personalise the price for existing travellers. 

This allows you to:

• retain the old package price for people who have already booked
• display the new package price to future travellers
• turn off the card surcharge for both groups

The trade-off is that you may absorb card costs for existing travellers while recovering them through the new price for future bookings.

NOTE: Locking in the original price applies to package pricing, but not automatically to individual add-ons and line items. Add-ons cannot be repriced in YouLi, so you'll need to make a new Add-on with new pricing instead. 

When this approach works especially well

• a trip has not yet launched
• a departure has few bookings
• your terms permit an appropriate price change
• you can clearly preserve the agreed price for existing travellers
• your team has a repeatable pricing formula

Option 3: Use a mixed approach

The simplest version of this: You can absorb the cost on already published trips while increasing the package prices of all trips launched from now onward. This avoids disruption to current travellers and operations while gradually moving the business onto a more sustainable pricing model.

For example, you might:

Best for

• businesses with a varied trip portfolio
• teams seeking some margin protection without repricing everything
• businesses with significant differences between trip margins or booking values
• operators with a mixture of mature and newly launched departures

Benefits

• protects margin where it matters most
• reduces the amount of immediate repricing work
• allows decisions to reflect the circumstances of each trip
• can minimise disruption for existing travellers

Trade-offs

• requires more internal coordination
• may be harder for staff to administer consistently
• different trips may follow different pricing rules
• traveller communications must be carefully managed
• exceptions can become difficult to maintain over time

f you choose this strategy, create an internal register showing:

• what approach was taken for each trip
• the effective date
• treatment of existing bookings
• treatment of add-ons
• the person responsible for making the change

Should you offer a bank transfer discount?

You can continue to offer discounts for particular payment methods after the card-network changes take effect as long as the headline price shows what would be paid on card.

This can be a good idea when the alternative method genuinely lowers your overall cost. However, bank transfer is not automatically cheaper if administration overhead is considered.

For example, you might need to take all these steps:

• confirm receipt
• match the transfer to the correct booking
• follow up incorrect amounts or references
• manually apply credits
• reconcile multiple instalments

The discussion on the webinar noted that a cash discount makes the most sense when the customer is paying a large amount in full or in a few large payments, not for many small instalment payments.

In YouLi, if you are on the Grow plan and above the no-fee direct bank-transfer option can include a mention of a discount if you are offering it.

That discount can currently be applied using Apply Credit in Manage Payments after payment is received, but YouLi is planning to implement automatic cash discounting options as it becomes clear how clients want to apply those discounts. So your feedback is appreciated as we refine our roadmap for this feature.

What YouLi is building to support repricing

YouLi is developing an feature to allow you to pass on the "convenience fee". This feature is intended to provide a faster way to reprice across all trips. 

So far, the feature is simple in concept, but big on impact. At the account level you would configure a "convenience fee" with the option to round it, like this:

• So a package price of $2,000 would become $2,060. But a package of price $2,450 would become $2,525 (instead of the unrounded $2,523.5)
• This will automatically bundle the convenience fee into the price seen by the traveller at all points
• It avoids presenting it as a card surcharge at checkout
• It would not apply it to trips that still have surcharging enabled
• It would not automatically apply to add-ons, booking add-ons or line items 

If you have input on how you'd like this feature to work, please share them with us.

The feature is scheduled for release at the end of September 2026. Because it was still under development at the time of the webinar, final capabilities and release timing will be confirmed in our release notes.

If your plan is to reprice across all your trips with the same amount, we recommend waiting for the feature. But if you're taking a mixed approach, you may prefer to handle yourself without this feature.

YouLi is also developing automated ways to apply cash discounting for selected non-card payment methods. During the webinar the discussion highlighted that these controls should consider not only the payment method, but also whether the traveller is paying in full or using a limited number of instalments.

How to choose the right strategy

Use the following decision guide.

Before making the final decision, review:

Your action checklist before 1 October

Do now

☐ Decide whether your default strategy will be absorb, reprice or mix.

☐ Confirm your actual card processing rates with Stripe or your payment provider.

☐ Start new trips without card surcharging.

☐ Build expected payment costs into the package prices of new trips.

☐ Update trip templates so surcharging is not enabled by default.

☐ Identify all published trips that currently have surcharging enabled -  we can help with that, just open a support request

☐ Decide how existing bookings will be treated.

☐ Review package prices, add-ons, line items and late fees separately.

☐ Document your strategy so sales, operations and finance apply it consistently.

Review with your adviser

☐ whether your current pricing approach requires a change

☐ if needed, whether your existing terms allow price changes to existing bookings, and if not, what change should be made

☐ if changing existing booked prices, how those changes should be communicated to already booked travellers

☐ how any booking, service or platform fee should be described and displayed

☐ how a bank-transfer ("cash") discount should appear in your pricing and terms to avoid seeming like a surcharge

Before the change takes effect

☐ turn off card surcharges on existing trips - we can help with that, just open a support request

☐ prepare a simple explanation for traveller enquiries based on the changes you've made

The bottom line

For many operators, the most practical transition will be to preserve pricing on existing, heavily booked trips while immediately adopting higher all-inclusive prices for new trips.

Whichever strategy you choose, the objective is the same: a traveller should understand the relevant price before committing to the booking, while your business uses a pricing model that remains commercially sustainable.

Remember that changes take time and the interpretation of the rules may adjust as they are rolled out, stay tuned for any changes.

Need help in YouLi? Contact YouLi Support to identify rips with surcharging enabled an plan the platform changes for your chosen approach.

Sources for further reading

• Reserve Bank of Australia: Frequently Asked Questions - Removal of Payment Surcharges from 1 October 2026
• Reserve Bank of Australia: Merchant Card Payment Costs and Surcharging - March 2026
• Australian Competition and Consumer Commission: Card surcharges
• YouLi Webinar: Navigating Australian Surcharge Rules, August 2026 - request a copy of the presentation