....the RBA has backflipped and has now concluded “it would be in the public interest and consistent with its mandate to promote competition and efficiency in the Australian payments system for BNPL providers to remove their no-surcharge rules, so that merchants can apply a surcharge to those payments if they wish.”
However, it is not clear that the Reserve Bank actually has power to make buy now, pay later providers remove the clauses preventing their costs from being passed on.The RBA only has jurisdiction to act over payment “systems”. The courts have construed the definition of payments system very narrowly, and industry sources suggest that buy now, pay later providers would not legally be considered as a payment system and therefore could not be forced by the RBA to respond.
From the Fin Review Article
I would suggest that most merchants would not pass on the surcharge, as they would lose much of the benefit to them of having Afterpay as a payment option.
Seems that there will be further rulings and legal argument and possibly court cases to follow.
Like much of what comes from the Fin Review, it will probably be a big fat nothing burger.
