An advertising campaign is helping small business vent their fury at the contentious credit card surcharge ban as one senior Labor minister concedes the Reserve Bank should have taken the radical changes a step further.
Mortgage broker and vocal tax critic Joseph Dauod is using billboards around Canberra Airport and on TV to oppose the RBA’s changes, which scrapped extra checkout fees on retail purchases, including coffees, clothes and groceries.
The RBA said the move would save consumers $1.6 billion a year.
But many businesses already struggling with higher input costs say they are unable to absorb the fees they must still pay to the banks for card purchases and are passing on the impost in the form of higher prices.
Labor frontbencher Kristy McBain said the RBA should go even further by preventing banks from charging small businesses for point-of-sale fees.
“I think the RBA made the right decision to ban card surcharging,” Ms McBain told Seven’s Sunrise.
“It costs customers about $1.6 billion every year, but they should have taken the next step and banned charging at the point of sale for small businesses.
“These banks are making billions of dollars in profits every year and small businesses are already paying account keeping fees and a range of other fees directly to their banks.
“We know the RBA has reduced the fees that banks can charge, but they should have taken that next step and said, if you can’t on-charge it to the customer, then the bank shouldn’t be charging their small business who is already paying a range of account-keeping fees directly to that bank.”
The Federal Government was forced to defend a messy transition period, including the Australian Taxation Office’s plan to stop accepting credit card payments for tax bills from December.
The Government announced on Friday it would cover the cost for the tax office to continue to accept credit card payments from small businesses until mid-2027 after backlash over the change.