International Card Payments for Australian Businesses: One Account or Two?

Every card sale involves two banks:

• The issuer: the bank that gave your customer the card. Its home country is the card's issuing country.
• The acquirer: the bank or provider behind your merchant account (in Australia, often called a merchant facility). It takes the payment on your side, and its country is where your account "lives".

When the two countries match, the sale is domestic. When they don't, Visa and Mastercard treat it as international and charge more.

Card's issuing country ≠ your merchant account's country = international sale, whatever currency you charge in.

So a Brisbane store that shows U.S. shoppers prices in USD still pays foreign-card fees on every U.S. card it takes on an Australian account. And an Australian traveller's card used on your U.S. account is foreign to that account, even though you're an Australian business. Changing the currency changes what your customer sees. It doesn't change what the networks charge you.

Your merchant service fee (the total you pay per sale) is made of three parts: interchange (the fee paid to the customer's card issuer), scheme fees (charged by Visa, Mastercard or eftpos) and your provider's margin. On foreign cards, the first two are much higher. Here's what the RBA published in its March 2026 Conclusions Paper:

• Merchant service fees on foreign-issued Visa and Mastercard credit cards in Australia "has been between 2.6 and 2.75 per cent". Foreign-issued American Express cost around 1.65%.
• Interchange on foreign-issued debit and credit cards averages around 1.75%, more than three times domestic rates.
• Foreign-issued cards are about 3% of card transactions in Australia but about 20% of the interchange merchants pay.

Source: RBA Conclusions Paper, March 2026 (section 3.3, footnote 45 and the implementation timeline). The cap is final and takes effect on 1 April 2027.

The RBA itself flagged the gap: it will "monitor these scheme fees" because networks could raise scheme fees or foreign exchange margins to make up for lower interchange. So don't expect foreign cards to cost the same as local ones after April 2027.

Will you see the saving? Only if your pricing plan passes it through. The RBA notes that single-rate plans charge the same fee for domestic and foreign cards. On an unblended plan (also called interchange-plus), the lower interchange flows to you automatically. Our guide to merchant fees in Australia compares the two plan types with the RBA's figures.

The same rule works in reverse. If you run a U.S. merchant account, an Australian customer's card is foreign to it, and U.S. cross-border fees apply. The RBA's 2027 cap doesn't help here: it covers foreign cards taken in Australia, not Australian cards taken in the U.S.

Sources: Visa U.S.A. interchange reimbursement fees, April 18, 2026 (international transactions table); network fees as published in an acquirer's Spring 2026 pass-through fee schedule (Fiserv, April 2026). Your provider's statement may name them differently.

Add those up: a Visa credit card from Australia, charged in USD on a U.S. account, pays 1.45 points in Visa's cross-border fees alone (1.00% + 0.45%), on top of international interchange. That's why a U.S. account suits U.S. customers, not Australian ones. For the U.S. side in depth, see how Australian businesses take payments from U.S. customers.

International sales can also be declined more often, because card issuers are more cautious with foreign merchants. When each country's cards go to an account in that country, the issuer sees a local merchant.

START sets up Australian businesses with an Australian merchant account, a U.S. merchant account, or both (the overview is on our Australian merchant accounts page). Here's who each setup fits.

When one account is enough. If overseas sales are small or occasional, the extra fees on them may cost less than running a second account. From April 2027, the 1.0% cap also makes U.S. cards cheaper on an Australian account, so recheck the numbers then.

When two accounts pay off. Once U.S. customers are a steady part of your sales, processing their cards at home means no foreign-card fees on those sales, fewer declines, and USD prices and deposits. Compare what your U.S. card sales cost on your Australian account with what they'd cost on a U.S. account, then weigh the gap against running a second account. Tell us your card mix and we'll help you run it.

If your business is in a higher-risk category, underwriting adds its own questions for each account. See high-risk merchant accounts in Australia.

Many owners search for a "multi-currency merchant account" in Australia, hoping one account can take every country's cards at local rates. It can't, because a merchant account belongs to one country. Cards from every other country are international on it, whatever currency you charge.

How START sets up "both":

• An Australian merchant account in AUD, through START's Australian acquiring partner, paid into your Australian bank account.
• A U.S. merchant account in USD for your U.S. customers.
• Both set up and managed together by START, so you deal with one team for both countries.

Sending each sale to the right account. Your checkout needs to send Australian orders to the Australian account and U.S. orders to the U.S. one. Most businesses split by storefront or by currency, for example an AUD checkout for Australians and a USD checkout for U.S. shoppers. How you do it depends on your shopping cart; tell us which one you use.

Showing prices in your customer's currency is a separate decision from where the sale is processed. There are two common ways to do it:

Visa's DCC rules (Visa Core Rules, April 2026 edition, section 5.8.9.2). A merchant offering DCC must:

• tell the cardholder that DCC is optional
• never pre-select it or use wording that makes it the default
• get the cardholder's express agreement
• not convert the sale into another currency after the cardholder has approved it

Someone always pays for the conversion. If you charge a U.S. customer in AUD, their bank converts it and may add a foreign transaction fee. If you price in USD on an Australian account, the conversion happens on your side and shows up in what you're paid. With two accounts, most customers pay in their own currency on a local account, and neither of you pays for a conversion on that sale. Tell us how you price today and we'll tell you what fits your accounts.

A payment gateway connects your website or checkout to your merchant account. With two accounts, each one needs its own gateway connection.

• The U.S. account gets its own Authorize.Net payment gateway. Authorize.Net's help center says its accounts "are set to one currency. If another currency is needed another account will need to be created" (Authorize.Net KB 000001210). START has set up more than 60,000 Authorize.Net accounts.
• The Australian account uses a gateway that works with your cart and how you sell. Tell us your platform and we'll match the gateway to it.

The same rule applies to every country: a New Zealand, UK or European card is foreign to both an Australian and a U.S. account. From April 2027, those cards on your Australian account fall under the RBA's 1.0% interchange cap, with scheme fees and currency margins on top. If a large share of your sales comes from one of these markets, tell us where your customers are and we'll tell you what setup makes sense. If you also sell in Canada, our guide to U.S. and Canada cross-border payments covers that border.