Merchant fees changes
The NSW Department of Customer Service and its agencies including Service NSW, Revenue NSW and NSW Fair Trading are removing the merchant fees for transactions.
Merchant fees charged by providers such as Visa or Mastercard are a familiar part of shopping with cards or online.
A merchant fee is a small percentage of the total amount. The percentage depends on the payment method, such as a credit or debit card, or an online payment like PayPal.
The Department of Customer Service has already stopped collecting the fee for more than 80 per cent of its transactions. The removal of fees on remaining transactions is progressing quickly.
Why are merchant fees being removed?
End of financial year reports identified some NSW Government agencies may not have a legitimate authority to pass on merchant fees to customers. The Department of Customer Service is now removing fees from all affected transactions. This commenced with the removal of fees from Revenue NSW and the Rental Bond Board. Fees have been removed from most Service NSW transactions with work to address the remainder progressing.
What do these changes mean for me?
As the merchant fees are removed, the customer cost of transactions with the NSW Government will be cheaper.
The NSW Department of Customer Service acknowledges these charges, while typically very small, may have impacted some customers and should not have been passed on.
The Department of Customer Service will update this page as work progresses to remove all fees. Further work is also underway to determine next steps.
Customers can register for updates on the Government's response.