Retail Payment System (Ban on Merchant Surcharges) Amendment Bill
This bill would make it illegal for shops and businesses to add an extra fee (called a surcharge) when you pay by EFTPOS, Visa, or Mastercard in person. Right now, many businesses charge you a small extra percentage when you tap or swipe your card. Under this bill, they would no longer be allowed to do that. If a business still charged you a surcharge, you could get that money back. A government agency called the Commerce Commission could also fine businesses that break the rule.
What this affects
Tap a topic to see how this bill touches it — with the parts of the text it’s based on.
Shops would no longer be allowed to charge you an extra fee just for paying by EFTPOS, Visa, or Mastercard in person.
A merchant must not charge a payment surcharge to a consumer in any of the following circumstances: (a) the consumer, using a debit or credit card, makes a retail payment using a card-present payment method transacted via an EFTPOS network, a Mastercard network, or a Visa network
any provision of a contract requiring the consumer to pay the surcharge is unenforceable; and the contract for the purposes of which the payment is made is treated as providing for the surcharge to be repaid to the consumer
The Commerce Commission estimates that consumers pay up to $150 million in payment surcharges each year, of which an estimated $45–65 million likely exceeds merchants' reasonable costs
Progress through Parliament
Have your say
Submissions open once a bill reaches the select committee stage. In the meantime, you can write to your local MP about it.
Write to your MPBill text sourced from legislation.govt.nz (Parliamentary Counsel Office). Arapono’s summary and breakdown are drafted with AI grounded in that official text and reviewed by an Arapono editor for accuracy and neutrality before publishing. Arapono is non-partisan and takes no position on this bill.