Senate Economics Legislation Committee, , 2:49:25 to 2:52:54
The Governor explains how capping interchange fees and removing surcharges will lower costs for small merchants and increase competition in the payment sector.
Topics: Cost recovery, Efficiency dividend
Speakers: Michele Bullock, Senator Lisa Darmanin
So the payment system board comprises myself uh as chair, um Brad is deputy chair. Then we have um six non execu um non executive uh members. Uh Scott Farrell, who's uh payments uh long standing payments uh lawyer, specialist in that. A guy called uh Ross Buckley, Professor Buckley from uh whose professor in things to do with payments, a woman called Deborah Ralston, who is a um another academic but sort of focuses. More on innovation and so on. She's on a number of different uh financial system uh financial institutions. She's involved in financial institutions. We have um Gina Kascotlie, of course, from the HC, who is actually there, not as the head of the ACCC, but um as Gina Cascotly because she has experience in this. Uh John Lonsdale, who is the chair of APRA, and Michelle Dika, who is uh also a um a venture capitalist and uh and uh into innovation in payment systems.
Thank you. Umks for that. Um just I guess my final question, and I will need to rotate, and I should have said before we kicked off the questions if each uh witness could um state your name uh and position when you next speak for to make the handside's job a lot easier. That would be I would be most grateful, thank you. Um in your opening statement, you talked about some of the impacts um of the implementation of that decision of the payment system board. Um, particularly, I think um for the reducing fees for small businesses uh and um competition. But could you talk about I guess what what what are the sort of broader positive impacts that you think it has or will have on the economy and consumers?
Um, um how long have you got?
Um only maybe one or two minutes, please.
So a few things. First of all, we think um it will lower payment costs for small merchants because we've lowered, we've capped interchange fees. And what used to happen with interchange fees is that big merchants got low interchange fees and small merchants got high interchange fees. That is now capped, so everyone is um small merchants now paying much lower interchange fees. So that's positive for them because that contributes to what they pay to accept cards. Second thing is it will increase competition, I think, because um merchants used to sort of just surcharge um uh now because they can't surcharge, they're going to look at their payment options and they're gonna say, well, that's too expensive. So give me a better give me a better price, or I'm not going to take that payment mechanism. So it will increase competition there. Um it'll make uh it just frankly, it's going to make it much easier for consumers because when they go and they see that the price of a coffee is five dollars, that's what they pay. They don't pay five dollars ten or five dollars and eight, they will pay five dollars ten. So there's a lot of advantages to consumers of just facing uh single price. Um I think you know, in the interest of time, they were they would be the main benefits I would highlight.
Thank you. I'm now going to rotate to Senator Hume.