Best Payment Gateways for Small Businesses in Australia
Synopsis
Australian small businesses can choose from a range of payment gateways and platforms, each offering different pricing, features, and integrations. From card processing to direct debit and BNPL options, selecting the right system depends on cost, customer experience, and business model.
Choosing a payment gateway used to be straightforward, sign up directly with your bank and carry on with the day-to-day operations of your business. Option-wise, these days there are dozens of them, and the right one tends to vary greatly depending on whether you sell online, in person or both. Below is a breakdown of the best payment gateway options available to Australian small businesses in 2026, and an imminent brief on how card surcharges work.
How does a payment gateway work?
A payment gateway is a piece of software used between your customer, your website or card machine and the bank on the other end. It uses the customer’s card or digital payment information and verifies that the transaction is legitimate before transferring the funds to your bank account in a safe manner.
This typically means a checkout page (or plugin) for an online store. Usually, for a physical store or mobile business, there is a card reader or point-of-sale terminal connected to an app. The larger question then is no longer which provider “does” online or in-person payments, but rather which one suits your fees, your setup time and your customers.
Stripe and eWay: Top solutions for Online Stores
Stripe is one of the most common options for Australian businesses as it allows creating a custom website, or for those using WooCommerce. It’s also a powerful option for you or your web developer to customise checkout, and charges around 1.7% plus 30 cents per transaction in Australia.
eWay is based in Australia and has been around for longer than most, thus usually provides one of the lowest flat domestic rates available at 1.5% plus 25 cents per transaction. It provides a large number of integrations with common shopping cart platforms as well. The lower percentage can really add up to big savings over the course of a year for a business doing a solid volume of local sales; especially compared with a slightly higher rate by others.
If your store is based on Shopify, the simple approach is to make use of Shopify Payments as it’s integrated within the platform and it avoids you having to set up a separate provider.
Square: A great pick for mobile and in-person businesses
Square is a little more than a set of simple and straightforward as it needs no monthly fees, provides a free card reader and a flat fee of 1.6% for in-person and 2.2% for online/keyed-in payments in Australia. It’s a big part of its appeal for smaller businesses: no extra pricing.
It is especially well suited for market stallholders, mobile tradespeople, pop-up shops and anyone accepting payments sporadically rather than operating a permanent shopfront. It has crossed over invoicing, payroll and arrangement booking into its system, which can be genuinely helpful to a small business that may want to work around with everything from one application.
One thing you should definitely know if you’re on WooCommerce, Square doesn’t integrate well with it, making it a good fit for businesses using Square’s own hardware and app rather than layering that tech onto an existing website.
Building Customer Trust and Global Reach with PayPal
PayPal remains one of the largest known payment brands in Australia and that matters when you intend on selling to customers who would prefer not to enter their card details directly onto a stranger's webpage. Since many people already hold a PayPal account, it makes sense to offer it as a checkout choice so that at the last step of a sale customers are less hesitant.
It also has its own buy-now-pay-later alternative called PayPal Pay (also from the same account), so businesses currently using PayPal to make payments do not need a separate BNPL provider to provide the service. That being said, PayPal is almost always best used in conjunction with another gateway rather than as your singular choice, because not every customer wants to check out through it.
Pinch Payments: Built For Invoice-Based Businesses
If you do not have a checkout page but instead run your business on sending invoices (for example, as a consultancy, an allied health practice, a trade business or professional services firm) explore invoice-focused providers like Pinch Payments. This is set up so that a client can pay by card on a sent invoice directly, rather than needing to create an entire online store just to receive payment.
Solving this is a different problem than with an e-commerce checkout, and places like Stripe built for it natively handle both recurring billing and part-payments more cleanly than a general-purpose gateway could.
Comparison of Popular Payment Gateways for Australian Small Businesses
| Payment Gateway | Best For | Key Features | Fees (Approx.) |
| Stripe | Online stores, WooCommerce, custom websites | Highly customisable checkout, recurring billing, subscription support, ideal for businesses that want flexibility and can customise their payment experience. | 1.7% + 30¢ per transaction |
| eWay | Australian e-commerce businesses | Australian-owned gateway with shopping cart integrations, competitive pricing and reliable local support, making it suitable for growing online retailers. | 1.5% + 25¢ per domestic transaction |
| Shopify Payments | Shopify merchants | Built directly into Shopify, quick to set up, no separate gateway required and seamless order management from one platform. | Varies by Shopify plan |
| Square | Retail stores, cafés, market stalls, mobile businesses | Free card reader, no monthly fees, POS software, invoicing and appointment tools in one platform for in-person businesses. | 1.6% (in-person), 2.2% (online) |
| PayPal | Businesses selling online or internationally | Trusted global payment option with PayPal Pay (BNPL), helping improve customer confidence and offering a familiar checkout experience. | Varies by transaction type |
| Pinch Payments | Invoice-based businesses | Lets customers pay directly from invoices, supports recurring payments and suits service-based businesses that don’t operate an online store. | Varies by plan |
| Afterpay | Retailers offering Buy Now, Pay Later | Popular BNPL option that integrates with major e-commerce platforms and helps increase customer spending and conversions. | Merchant fees vary |
| Zip Money | High-value purchases | BNPL provider with higher purchase limits, making it suitable for businesses selling premium or expensive products. | Merchant fees vary |
| Apple Pay & Google Pay | Mobile-first businesses | One-tap mobile payments that speed up checkout, reduce cart abandonment and work alongside your existing payment gateway. | Uses your gateway’s transaction fees |
Pay Later And Digital Wallets: Satisfying Customer Demands
The Australian shopper is expecting more payment options at checkout than just card these days. Australia’s best-known buy-now-pay-later brand Afterpay, which works on platforms like Shopify and WooCommerce, is still the most recognised option but has few data integration options from one site to another while Zip Money has significantly higher purchase limits that better suit expensive goods.
Apple Pay and Google Pay are among those features which are also worth turning on. Half of all Australian online shopping takes place on a mobile device, and allowing a consumer to check out with one tap rather than typing in their card details significantly reduces the cart abandonment rate.
Everything Businesses Must Know About the Ban on Surcharges in October 2026
Before you get locked into a provider, here’s something every small business should know. Card surcharges on eftpos, Visa and Mastercard debit and credit payments will be outlawed from 1 October 2026 after the Reserve Bank of Australia confirmed a multi-year ban. As of that date, anyone who currently applies a surcharge to cover card processing costs will not be able to do that on those networks.
To counteract this, the RBA is also reducing the interchange fee caps that payment providers and banks can charge on payments, which will lower the cost of card acceptance for most merchants, especially smaller ones who are still paying closer to where fees were before. Importantly, the prohibition doesn’t cover American Express and PayPal, or buy-now-pay-later services (BNPL), which will continue to be governed by existing regulations for the time being.
Because there will be no more surcharge, the actual percentage that a gateway charges you matters more than ever since you won’t be able to pass the cost simply like most businesses do today with a surcharge. So, it is another good reason to compare rates properly now, rather than in October finding out how the change fits into your business analysis.
How To Make The Right Choice With A Gateway For Your Business
There are so many providers working in overlapping spaces that looking at some practical factors rather than just the headline fee can be a better guide. Kick off with how you make your actual sales, a business that processes 90% of its payments online needs something rather different from one dealing in person or sending out invoices.
After looking at the percentage rate, focus on total cost. Monthly fees, minimum charges and costs of add-ons (for example recurring billing) make it so that depending on your regular sales volume, one provider may turn out to be cheaper than the other. Also, how quickly funds settle into your bank account, next-day or a few days’ payout from the provider can make an enormous difference to cash flow.
Finally, check the compatibility of a provider with your existing tools. Typically, a gateway with clean integration to your website platform, accounting software or point-of-sale system will save far more time in the long run than one that has slightly lower fees but requires greater manual effort to reconcile.
The Bottom Line
There is no one best payment gateway for every Australian small business, the right choice will depend on whether you sell online, face-to-face or both, how often you take payments and how much value you place on simple versus flexible solutions. Stripe and eWay fit online stores seeking competitive rates, Square fits mobile and occasional sellers wanting minimum hassle, PayPal provides trust for cautious shoppers, while providers focused on invoices such as Pinch Payments will suit service businesses who invoice clients directly.
Rather than choosing one solution, many businesses find themselves running multiple options side by side. A café might implement Square on the counter and a different online gateway for pre-orders, or a consultancy might combine an invoicing tool with PayPal for those clients who would rather pay that way. And that is absolutely fine, as long as the total fees make sense in your margins.
Whatever you go with, it pays to compare real on-the-ground transaction fees for your average sale sizes side by side, since even a small percentage difference compounds over the course of a year. And with card surcharges disappearing from October 2026, now, more than ever, it will be important that you get your gateway and pricing right.
At Inspirepreneurs Magazine, covering entrepreneurship, business failures, and the human stories behind the world's most ambitious founders. She writes at the intersection of strategy and storytelling.
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