The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has warned merchants not to try and avoid coverage under the new card payment surcharge standard by introducing "service fees" or "handling fees" in place of surcharges.The new surcharge standard will take effect for large businesses on September 1 and for all other businesses on September 1 next year. It limits surcharges on card payments to recovering the cost of acceptance, which has been defined more narrowly than in previous versions of the standard.In most cases the permissible surcharge level will be the amount the merchant has been charged by its acquiring bank for processing the payment.The ACCC said that, as a guide, merchant costs involved in accepting debit card payments are around 0.5 per cent of the transaction value and credit card payments around one per cent to 1.5 per cent.It said that if a business includes a service fee or handling fee in its pricing the surcharge ban will apply if those fees are payable on some payment methods and not others."A business is not able to by-pass the new ban by introducing what is in effect a payment surcharge but call it something else," the ACCC said.The surcharge standard is unlikely to apply to fees that are payable regardless of the payment method. However, such fees need to be included in the advertised total price, so the consumer is aware of the full cost before they make their purchase. The ACCC, which has been given power to enforce the new standard, said it would investigate complaints and would require businesses to provide documents relating to their costs of accepting card payments.From June next year acquiring banks and payment facilitators will be required to give merchants regular statements that set out the cost of acceptance for each card scheme.Payment instruments that are not covered by the surcharge standard include Bpay, PayPal, Diners Club and American Express cards issued directly by Amex. Nor does the standard apply to taxi payments.