September 2026 – Stripe payments
Wiise Stripe card surcharge updates upcoming so customers.
Card surcharging removed for Australian customers from 1 October 2026
To help business owners and financial controllers stay compliant with the Reserve Bank of Australia's payments reforms without tracking a deadline themselves, we've built a date-driven cutover into Wiise Stripe Payments for Australian environments.
From 1 October 2026, the RBA's reforms remove the ability for merchants to add a surcharge when a customer pays by card, covering eftpos, Visa, Mastercard and American Express. Compliance risk sits with the merchant, not with Wiise or Stripe, and card networks and payment providers are expected to enforce the no-surcharge rules from day one. Without this change, every Australian customer using surcharging would have had to remember to switch it off themselves, on the right day, or risk breaching scheme rules and having payments disputed or refunded.
What changes:
- Before 1 October 2026, surcharging works exactly as it does today. Payers see the same checkout, including any surcharge the merchant has enabled.
- From 1 October 2026, Wiise payment links no longer add a surcharge for any card type in Australian environments, regardless of how the "Charge Stripe Fee to Customer" setting is configured.
- Payers are taken straight to the standard Stripe checkout with the invoice amount only.
- Payments continue to flow into Wiise Stripe Payment records and the cash receipt journal exactly as they do today.
- New Zealand environments are unaffected and surcharging continues unchanged.
What this means for you: you are compliant on the day the ban starts without lifting a finger. No missed deadline, no accidental surcharging on 1 October, and a cleaner checkout with a single total for your payers.
What you need to do: nothing. There is no setting to change and no configuration required. Your existing surcharge setting is simply no longer applied in Australia from 1 October.
This is especially valuable for any Australian business currently passing Stripe processing fees on to customers at checkout — particularly those closing a quarter or month-end in the same week the ban takes effect.
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