Parliament has passed a bill that will ban excessive card surcharging but it will be some time before the standards required to put the law into effect are implemented.The Competition and Consumer Amendment (Payment Surcharges) Bill was passed in the Senate yesterday, after going through the House of Representatives last week.The new law gives the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission power to enforce standards to be developed by the Reserve Bank.The ACCC has power to gather information from parties involved in the payments process, issue infringement notices and impose fines.The Reserve Bank's Payments System Board issued a statement, saying it expected to establish the new standard by May and would then set a transition period.The RBA is expected to modify the current surcharging standard to define payment card acceptance costs more narrowly.Under the current rules, merchants have a right to recover their card acceptance costs through a surcharge, and card scheme operators have the right to set scheme rules that limit surcharging to reasonable cost.The "reasonable cost of acceptance" includes the merchant service fee charged by the merchant's acquiring bank and a number of additional costs. The RBA has said previously that card acceptance costs would be limited to the merchant service fee and other fees paid to the merchant's bank (or other payment service provider).