It’s taken three years to build but newsagents now have a viable retail network for bill payment and prepaid recharge product. Like any new kid on the block, all stakeholders have worked together to ensure that there are no barriers. Our service costs the same or less (in the case of some billers) than that offered by Australia Post. There are no extra fees for payment type, until now. Newsagents have just been advised that from November there will be a 14 cent fee for debit card payment. While we’re not the first with such a charge, the challenge for newsagents will be the seamless implementation of this charge on to the customer so that newsagents themselves are not left funding this. It is something else to track, claw back and process.
I expect some newsagents to levy a fee which compensates for the extra work while others will pass on the 14 cents. I wonder how customers will react. My sense is that our network is not strong enough to sustain a levy like this. Newsagents are not expected to be as fee hungry as Australia Post.
We cannot afford the 14 cent fee to be a tipping point against the growth we have achieved so far in this area.