MGA TMA welcomes Treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s commitment to mandate Least Cost Routing as a default for family and private businesses in Australia
01 sept 2021
MGA TMA and its 2,600 family and privately-owned grocery, supermarket, bottleshop and timber and hardware businesses around Australia, welcomes and strongly supports the announcement from Treasurer Josh Frydenberg this morning stating that the Morrison Government is committed to engaging with the RBA to lowering costs for small business through the implementation of default least-cost routing, in the debit card market, as well as opposing single network cards that only offer Visa or Mastercard options
MGA TMA CEO Jos de Bruin said, “we have been advocating for Least Cost Routing to be implemented by the big four banks, as a default mechanism and the ability to access a more economical eftpos debit card payment gateway, for more than 10 years. Finally, the government has listened to small businesses, who, with the advent of tap and go and contactless payments, particularly during Covid, have experienced unsustainable and exponential cost increases to transact their customers debit card payments.”
This Least Cost Routing facility must be made available in all forms of payment including via mobile and digital wallets, online and any form of E-Commerce.”
Jos de Bruin said, “Our members conduct almost 600 million transactions per annum and pay in excess $88m in card payment fees. Any savings achieved with least cost routing, away from the higher fees charged by the international schemes, will be reflected by our members providing additional employment opportunities and reinvestment back into their businesses and most importantly, be able to compete with the large corporate chains who do not have to pay these exorbitant debit card payment fees.”
We thank Treasurer Frydenberg, as this is a much-needed change required to enable family and private businesses to not be “overcharged” for card transactions and to compete with their larger counterparts.