Cards

News about card payments, including debit, credit and pre-paid cards

Apple Pay pushes take up at Woolies amid concerns about hidden fees

Apple Pay has taken out paid advertising at Woolies checkouts to further push up its market share, amid serious concerns from banks that hidden fees are adding significant cost to Australia’s payments system.

Fintech

New Shopify app reduces impact of parcel deliveries at checkout

Australian EcoTech company Sphere has launched a new app that helps Shopify retailers and their customers reduce the impact of parcel deliveries when making a payment at the checkout.

Digital & Online

Putin’s China pitch amps up the scramble for new payment rails

Vladimir Putin’s call for a new payments system free of Western control comes as sanctions on Russia and China’s ambitions converge with a surge of new global domestic and regional networks.

Digital & Online

Soaring merchant fees stoke boom in payments advisers

The opacity of merchant fee pricing across the globe is spawning a wave of litigation and burgeoning demand for payments experts. One of the world’s largest merchant advisory groups, BB Merchant Services, says it is expanding its presence in the Australian market.

Cash

Westpac adopts Mastercard’s new virtual card via Oracle

Mastercard has launched a new virtual card option for Australia corporates, with Westpac becoming the first to activate the solution for clients using Oracle Fusion Cloud Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP).

Digital & Online

With no consensus on card fees and surcharging, will the public interest prevail?

If the Reserve Bank wants consensus on its proposal for merchant fees and surcharging, it’s a lost cause. The best the central bank can hope for is a decision in the public interest, leveraging strong sentiment on issues such as scheme fees, least-cost routing and the burden on small business.

Fintech

AP+ sets early 2026 launch date for LCR on Click to Pay

eftpos owner AP+ is chasing Mastercard’s aggressive Click to Pay rollout in the land grab to embed tokens and least-cost routing for online card payments.

LCR

Debit spend up, while credit pays the bills

July's RBA payment data, released on Monday, reveals diverging trends: credit cards struggle in-store but dominate bill payments, while strong debit card growth suggests returning consumer confidence in discretionary spending.

Cash

Payments reforms put global providers in the frame

After years of deliberation and delay, federal parliament has finally passed changes to the Payments System Regulation Act. While the reforms give the Treasurer new special powers to designate payments systems in the ‘national interest’ they are unlikely to advance the RBA’s mandate to support competition. Currently only eftpos, NPP, Visa and MasterCard are designated payment systems.

Merchant Service Fees

Tyro’s bizarre warning to SMEs, while industry still peddling costly bundled rates and surcharging

Tyro is warning customers to only make “modest price adjustments” in the wake of the proposed RBA surcharging bans next year, while continuing to promote hefty 1.4% bundled plans with surcharging to new small business clients.

Merchant Service Fees

How reliable are the RBA’s official numbers on debit routing?

Banks and other acquirers enjoyed lower wholesale costs for processing eftpos transactions last year, but the average service fees paid by merchants still soared by 34 per cent. The blowout in merchant costs comes as the RBA released fresh data that least cost routing had been “enabled” for 80 per cent of Australian merchants at the end of June.

Merchant Service Fees

JP Morgan looks to ruffle local major banks in corporate payments

The country’s big four banks face a serious challenge from JP Morgan in the institutional payments market.

Banks

Qantas says Frequent Flyers will grow, despite proposed fee cuts

Qantas remains upbeat that its Loyalty division can continue grow at 10-12% each year despite dark warnings from card schemes about the interchange caps that underpin the program.

Merchant Service Fees

Routing now available for 50 per cent of debit cards on mobile

Mobile least-cost routing (LCR) is now available to 50 per cent of cardholders, according Australian Payments Plus (AP+).

LCR

Adyen halves merchant costs with AI-enabled dynamic routing

Adyen has achieved a breakthrough in lowering the payments costs borne by merchants in Australia and the US, using an AI-driven dynamic routing platform. The service has delivered cost savings running into the millions for big online merchants such as Adobe and Microsoft.

Fintech

Card fees push offshore fraud costs onto Australians

AusPayNet has promised to escalate soaring card not present fraud offshore to its peak body card forum to discuss a possible fix. In meantime, local businesses and their customers are paying the price.

Merchant Service Fees

Cuscal swoops on Indue ahead of ASL marketing push

Cuscal boss Craig Kennedy says he has received positive feedback from Indue customers about his company’s proposed $75 million buyout of its Brisbane-based rival.

Fintech

Mastercard Click to Pay: security push, or LCR firewall?

Australia’s two biggest issuers are bulk‐enrolling millions of Mastercard customers into tokenised, one‐click online checkout. Banks say it’s about fraud; critics say it sidelines eftpos and Least‐Cost Routing

LCR

Paul Monnington takes the reigns at Mastercard in 2026

WPay boss Paul Monnington will take the reigns at Mastercard in Australia and New Zealand in January 2026, after Richard Wormald accepted a promotion to head up the company’s Asia Pacific region in Singapore.

Merchant Service Fees

Tyro transaction value flat, as buyers remain elusive

Tyro’s full year result shows that one of the Sydney acquirer’s key business transaction metrics has flatlined in the 12 months to June, while it searches for new business in verticals including pet health, automotive and aged care.

Fintech

Zip eyes Nasdaq listing as Aussie business softens

Sydney payments outfit Zip has announced plans to list on Nasdaq, after seeing significant growth in its US operations and a softening market at home.

Fintech

Australia’s card fraud problem approaches $1 billion: safe at the checkout, but soaring overseas online

Despite claims by the card schemes that watertight security underpins their fees, gaping loopholes are being exposed by criminals creating a fraud problem worth almost $1billion a year.

Scams & Fraud

ACCC missing in action on anti-competitive payments deals across the public sector

The ACCC prefers to do nothing when state and federal government agencies such as Transport for NSW enter deals that stifle competition in the payments industry.

Regulation

Monthly payments data report

The RBA released its retail payments data as at June 2025 on August 7, showing declines in in-store credit card spending and New Payments Platform (NPP) growth moderating.

Cash

Quest and Coles payment terminal partnership

Quest Payment Systems has partnered with Coles Group to update its payment terminal fleet across more than 2,000 supermarkets and liquor outlets in Australia.

Fintech