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The Reserve Bank of Australia has banned surcharges on debit and credit card transactions, which will save consumers and businesses an estimated 1.8 billion dollars. It's the first of a number of reforms the RBA will be making to Australia’s payment systems.

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00:01There's three main changes that we can talk about today.
00:06The first is obviously the surcharge ban to credit and debit cards.
00:12So it's going to save consumers $1.6 billion and it's going to save businesses $200 million.
00:19The second is a cap on interchange fees.
00:22So that's basically the fees between the business and the banks or the payment system.
00:27That's now going to have a total cap on what that can be.
00:31And that's really important for small businesses in particular because they are the ones who pay the most with these
00:37interchange fees.
00:38Because unlike Coles or Woolworths, they don't really have much bargaining power.
00:43And that could save businesses $910 million a year.
00:47And then the final update is that payment systems are now going to have to basically disclose what their fees
00:55are.
00:56As expected, obviously, we're talking about pretty complicated things.
01:00Some businesses are concerned that if they can no longer have surcharging fees, they're going to basically have to absorb
01:10those costs themselves.
01:11Or they're going to have to basically increase the price of food, goods and services.
01:18And they're concerned because, obviously, they want to be competitive in the market.
01:24There's been some fintech companies who are welcoming these changes.
01:29And then, obviously, we heard from the Federal Treasurer earlier, who is also welcoming these changes.
01:35Australians hate paying these charges.
01:37Let's be blunt about it.
01:38And the Reserve Bank has done quite a bit of work here.
01:43They are responsible for the system that is being changed here.
01:49They have the ability to make these changes without the Parliament legislating them.
01:55They are the appropriate place for these changes to be determined and implemented.
02:01And so we can expect these changes to start to come into effect from October this year.
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