Card Surcharges

This is frankly outrageous, and I struggle to understand how this can possibly be considered a fair outcome for small businesses.

MYOB has confirmed above that the 1.8% + 25c fee will remain because, in MYOB's words, it is an "online payment transaction fee" charged to us for processing the payment.

If MYOB is permitted to charge us, its customer, a 1.8% + 25c transaction fee for processing a payment, why should we not be permitted to recover that exact transaction cost from our own customer when their choice of payment method is what directly causes us to incur it?

Calling MYOB's charge a "transaction fee" rather than a "surcharge" does not make the cost disappear. It is still a direct and identifiable cost incurred by the business as a result of that particular transaction.

The outcome therefore seems completely contradictory. MYOB can charge its customer a transaction fee to cover the cost of providing a payment service, but its business customers are expected to absorb that same fee and are prohibited from passing the direct cost of the transaction on to their customers.

For businesses processing large invoices, 1.8% is substantial. For example, a $10,000 payment would cost the business $180 + 25c simply because the customer elects to pay through MYOB Online Payments. Why should that cost automatically become the business owner's responsibility?

If businesses are prohibited from recovering card processing costs from the customers who generate them, then payment providers should not be permitted to continue imposing percentage-based transaction fees on businesses under effectively the same rationale.

At the very least, I would like MYOB to explain the logic behind this distinction and what it intends to do about the 1.8% + 25c fee from 1 October. Simply telling small businesses that the fee remains but we are no longer allowed to recover it from the customer is an extraordinarily poor outcome for MYOB's business customers.