State of Payment Providers in Australia, Q3 2026

Of the 21 payment providers we track in Australia, 7 publish a price you can look up and 14 quote on request. Among those that publish, the numbers below are what they charged as at 30 Sep 2026. Every figure is verified at the vendor's own pricing page and frozen at that date: this is a dated record, not a live table.

How many payment providers publish a price?

We track 21 payment providers in Australia. Of those, 7 publish a price you can look up without talking to a salesperson, and 14 quote on request. That split is the single most useful thing to know before you start comparing: 33% of this market will tell you what it costs up front.

The spread matters more than the middle. On every figure above, the gap between the cheapest and the dearest provider is what a comparison is for, and it is arithmetic on published rates rather than a negotiating position.

What do payment providers cost in Australia?

Estimated monthly cost at three merchant profiles, computed with the same cost engine that powers our comparison tables. Providers that quote on request are counted separately rather than treated as free.

Pin Payments publishes a price but does not appear below: it does not offer every channel these profiles assume, so there is no like-for-like cost to quote. That is why the count here is lower than the number of providers that publish a price.

The range is the honest headline here. In a market where the median is $163.25, the gap between cheapest and dearest is what a comparison is actually for.

How we compiled this report

Every figure is read from the vendor's own published pricing page and frozen at 30 Sep 2026, so this is a dated record of that market rather than a live table, last reviewed on 2026-09-04. Full method, definitions and limitations: how we compile these reports.

Conclusion

The finding in this report is not a price. It is that most of this market will not tell you its price.

Seven of the twenty one payment providers we track in Australia publish a rate card a merchant can act on without a sales call. The other fourteen quote on request only. That is close to the opposite of the accounting software market, where six of seven publish. It is worth being clear about what that costs a business: you cannot compare on price until you have had a conversation with a salesperson, by which point you are comparing an offer made to you rather than a published rate, with no way of knowing how it sits against the offer the business down the road was made.

This matters more this quarter than it usually would. From 1 October 2026 merchants can no longer pass card costs on to customers as a surcharge, so the fee stops being something a business hands on and becomes a cost it has to absorb. A business absorbing a cost needs to know what that cost is, and for two thirds of this market the honest answer is still that you cannot find out without booking a call.

Among the providers that do publish, the spread is the part that should worry you. The online rate runs from 1.25% to 2.9%, more than double at the top end, and on the $20,000 a month of card volume our established merchant profile assumes, that gap alone is about $330 a month. The in-person rate runs from 0.79% to 1.7%, worth about $182 a month on the same volume. Neither gap is a negotiating position. It is arithmetic on published rates, and it now comes out of the merchant's own margin rather than the customer's bill.

The absence of the other fourteen is the story here, not a gap in our research. Every provider in this report was read at its own pricing page, and fourteen of them publish no rate a merchant can act on. A market that mostly quotes privately is one where the price you get depends on how hard you push and how much volume you bring. That was defensible while a business could hand the cost to the customer. Now it is the merchant's own money, and the case for making them ask is much weaker.