From October 2026 you cannot apply card processing surcharges on Visa, Mastercard or EFTPOS transaction

This is a regulatory change overseen by the RBA. RBA faq on this can be found here

https://www.rba.gov.au/payments-and-infrastructure/review-of-retail-payments-regulation/2026-03/conclusions-paper/faqs/

Removing surcharging from your c9 instore transactions

If you have surcharging setup in your c9 make sure before Oct 1 you remove this. This is strictly every c9 customers responsibility to do this. This is not something we at c9 will do.

1. Setup -> main setup screen
2. Goto payments tab
3. click on ‘more’ next to each payment system where you have surcharging configured
4. Make sure you unselect the highlighted option below
   
5. click close. Make sure you click Ok in bottom right of setup screen to apply these changes

If you use till/nuvei for online weborder processing there is another adjustment you must make which you must perform.

1. Setup -> main setup screen
2. Goto eftpost/paypal tab
3. click on ’till payments gateway configuration’
4. make sure ‘no surcharge option is selected’
   
5. click continue. Make sure you click Ok in bottom right of setup screen to apply these changes

Surcharging managed by your eft terminal

If you have surcharging computed on eft terminal itself you’ll need to confirm your eft provider has a plan in place already with disabling this an whether or not that requires action from you.

C9 e-comm Website surcharging

Actual surcharge reporting and capture on c9 websites will be disabled by us. Invoicing back in your c9 may still be subject to surcharging so make sure you review settings as described above.

Merchant fees

One disappointing aspect of these RBA changes is that it doesn’t appear that there are actual any regulatory constraints on what banks and card processing providers are going to bill merchants such as yourself and I guess it is reasonable to expect the processors are not going to change their pricing at all. All RBA regulates is what banks and procesors charge one another. Whether or not those savings are passed on is entirely upto disretion of acquiring/processing providers.

Considering this, contact us if you need help changing pricing in c9 if you were previously charging surcharges and you want to manage losses caused with Oct 1 with price changes.

Special consideration – paypal

If you have paypal on c9 e-comm website note you can continue to surcharge this payment system. There is no regulatory requirement to remove these.

Special consideration – AMEX

Note that AMEX are not subject at all to this RBA ruling, but inspite of this they have decided to amend their merchant agreement to disallow surcharging but do not appear to offer any sort of fee compensation in return. Very cynical action on their behalf which they are using to drive adoption so expect in time to see more and more customers present with AMEX since from POV of the customer it now appears to be the ‘same’. if you currently accept AMEX, consider how to manage this additional harm.

 

Another issue with recent release: reencrypted clerkkeys unintentionally became case sensitive. Often clerkkeys are numbers so not a problem but some dealers use alpha too. Now fixed so that clerkey entry is not case sensitive.

Recent changes to help with tracking deleted unit costings broke deal picklist.  Now fixed.

This mornings update broke unit sales. Would pop an error during sale finalisation. Now fixed.

Includes DB changes. You must log all c9 terminals out to install

Security enhancements

This version of c9 includes a range of security changes as part of our regular security audit efforts

• General Cryptography improvements
  • Passwords / Clerk keys migrated to PBKDF / HMAC-SHA256 hashes
  • At rest encryption of all other critical data migrated to AES/GCM using a new key management regime that will allow use to easily rotate and expire old/compromised keys
• Remote Access improvements
  • Add ability to set a per user remote access password, configured in login users. A new remote client needs to be installed in order to make use of this. This will allow disabling /retiring of the existing global remote access password for stricter access control
  • Part of above change mobile capture on remote access will use 2FA mobile configured on login user to enforce strict MFA authenticiation
• Stricter C9 support tooling.  For our own remote access into dealer systems as part of our support work, this version forces our existing access to use strict MFA linked to staff mobile phones. Previous support access was /only single factor verification.
• Other security related changes
  • clerkkey input now requires an explicit Enter key press to test the clerk key. So clerk input now requires two enter key presses to continue on. This is necessary to both improve security of clerk access to minimise risk accidental/intentional discovery of low entrophy clerk keys, but also because PBKDF algorithm is intentionally slow, it is no longer possible to check for a match on every key stroke
  • TFN presentation on payroll tab is by default hidden. There is a unhide button you can click to review TFN
  • PayDay super log / STP log clearing: interaction with STP and PayDay super now clears potentially sensitive request payloads once the operation is finalized (failed or completed)
  • Disable access to database menu until login is completed. Contents of this menu have security implications so access to be constrained
  • Payroll super report : make it obvious export will also export TFNs
  • VicRoads : fix misaligned DOB on new authority form

Other small changes

• New GL expense code for tools
• delete unit costs /floorplan costs / rebates etc. Previously when deleted if you viewed the deleted journal it wasn’t obvious what unit the deleted entry was for. Now this can be interrograted. This change is expected to be useful for untangling reckless pulling of levers in the backoffice that sometimes happens at some shops in order to try to make a bankrec align for example
• unit Stocklist / stocktake reports : sort results by reference. Previously didn’t apply any sorting, output was whatever postgres felt like doing. Now fixed

Note: this version moves from 5.2.162 to 5.2.164 : this is intentional because of nature of re-encryption changes on database.

This version of c9 fixes a long standing nuisance when transactions auto allocate. It is mostly a problem with bulk transactions so mostly affects when we install a new c9 and bulk import AR and AP txn history. But this issue could also explain unexpected results in some scenarios when doing bulk linking. Normally reconcile masks problem because when we reconcile are are usually tallying unallocated txn totals of exact same amount. But if reconcile is unbalance then this misallocation could happen too. Also adding txns one at a time as what normally happens doesn’t trigger the incorrect behaviour.

Scenario is txns are supposed to auto allocate from oldest to newest but because of a bug when processing multiple txns simultaneously it could leave unexpected gaps in txn allocation depending on how AR and AP txns line up in terms of their relative amounts. Illustrating:

The correct outcome is we want unallocated gaps in the most recent transactions, not interleaved in historical txns.

 

Fix 1 : low level bug could lead to unrelated invoices appearing to be tangled on an invoice : depends on what invoices you were eyeballing before and whether or not those invoices contain and merged parts from other invoice.  This bug has been in c9 for a very long time, since 2016. Symptoms explained by this bug brought to our attention today. Even though it has been there for a decade and only just reported now, the symptoms are a nuisance enough needed an urgent fix

Fix 2 : tidy a visual bug with deposit held report. Would not render a date for customer held lines in some circumstances when running the report historically (misfiltering lines)