Business

New fees, higher costs: Card surcharges are ending – how will it affect the way you pay?

The Guardian Australia (Business) Catie McLeod Consumer affairs reporter

29 Sept 2026 16:05 AEST Summary

From the report

Australian ban on credit and debit card surcharges begins this week. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has issued similar advice.

Headline check

There is nothing in this headline a machine can check against the report: no figure, no name and no quotation.

Nothing was measured here, so nothing is claimed. How this is checked

This is a summary. The indicators are not. Every score on this page was measured over the full 817-word report, which is the only way the numbers mean anything.

How it is written

Niral Score 10 · calm mundaneloaded

10 more readings adjectives, repeated words, sentiment, political diction and 2 more and 4 at zero

Highlighted in the text. Words that carry a fact and quoted words are not counted.

businesses14cash13payment10card9fees8costs7surcharges6cost5merchants5pay5consumers4credit4debit4methods4payments4processing4absorb3altogether3changes3discounts3families3guardian3increase3longer3pass3school3service3small3used3using3able2accept2accepting2already2become2business2canteen2care2comment2contacted2customers2decided2difficult2help2higher2lot2manage2method2minimum2number2online2order2people2prices2pricing2see2stop2surcharging2typical2week2and 1 more

Sentiment +0.0 hostilefavourable Political diction 0 A story about politics, written without coded language Sourcing 56 unattributednamed sources Mood 59.8 sorrowjoyful

4 read zero: generational, gender, jingoistic, religious

Generational 0 harder on the oldharder on the young Gender 0 no gendered framingframing throughout Jingoistic 0 reports to a readerwrites from a camp Religious 0 not invokedovert

How the article is written, not whether it is correct. How each is measured.

Measured on The Guardian Australia (Business)’s report as filed, which is all we may publish of this one.

How this outlet filed it, and how we rewrote it

No other newsroom we read has filed on this event, so there is nothing to compare it with yet.

Outlet	Niral Score
The Guardian Australia (Business)as they published this story	10

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