As long as they are not making a profit, Australian retailers are allowed to recover their payment costs through surcharges on card payments. Larger business do not usually surcharge as they are able to absorb the payment costs but smaller businesses require the surcharge to keep up with high inflation and rising costs.
The Reserve Bank has introduced an initiative called least-cost-routing (LCR) to help cut card processing costs for businesses. LCR means terminals in businesses will automatically default to the lowest-cost card network to process their debit transactions.