Guides›Card Surcharge Changes
The Card Surcharge Ban & What to Charge Instead
From 1 October 2026, Australian businesses can no longer add a separate card fee on top of a sale. Here's what that means, and a calculator to work out your new membership price.
What's actually changing
The Reserve Bank of Australia is banning card surcharging nationwide from 1 October 2026. A surcharge is any extra fee a business adds specifically because a customer is paying by card, on top of the advertised price. After that date, whatever price you show is the price everyone pays — card or otherwise.
Right now, Swim Club Connect's checkout adds a processing fee on top of your membership price to cover card-payment costs. That has to change before October — not because Stripe is changing anything on its end, but because the fee itself is the kind of thing the ban targets.
The compliant fix isn't complicated.
Instead of adding a fee at checkout, you set one all-inclusive price up front. The calculator below does the maths for you: tell it what you want your club to actually receive, and it works out what to type into your membership fee setting so that, after the app's platform fee and real card-processing costs, you net exactly that.
Work out your new membership price
Enter the amount you want your club to actually receive for a membership fee — or any other individually priced item, like store merchandise. The maths is the same either way: the calculator shows what to charge, and exactly where the rest goes.
Enter an amount greater than $0.
| Your club receives | $0.00 |
| GR8 Apps platform fee 2%, GST inclusive | $0.00 |
| Card processing (Stripe) 1.7% + $0.30, plus GST — domestic Australian card | $0.00 |
| Total charged to the family | $0.00 |
This assumes a domestic Australian card.
The small number of families paying with an international card cost slightly more to process than this covers. That's a deliberate simplification, not an oversight — after 1 October you can't legally charge a different price by card type anyway, so pricing for the common case is the only option that's still compliant, not just the simplest one.
Questions about how this applies to your club specifically? Email admin@swimclubconnect.com or visit our contact page.