Know Your Script
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Australia-wide

Why did my pharmacy ask for cash or add a card surcharge for my prescription?

There is no law on this

The short answer

There is no cannabis-specific rule at the card terminal — an Australian pharmacy filling a prescription is an ordinary merchant, and what you are paying for is an ordinary transaction. Where a pharmacy prefers cash or adds a surcharge, the reasons are commercial: the costs of card acceptance, or occasionally a payment processor's policy about cannabis-related merchants. The surcharge itself is capped by competition law — a large business may not charge more than its actual cost of accepting that payment method.

General information, not advice. This page describes the law as at the last-checked date shown at the foot of it. It does not take your circumstances into account, and small differences in circumstances change outcomes. If a decision turns on this, speak to someone qualified about your own situation.

What the law actually says

A merchant may choose how it gets paid. Subject to the surcharge cap, a business can decline a particular payment method — cash-preferred is not unlawful, and neither is declining a card scheme. What the law constrains is the size of a surcharge, not the choice of channel.

What the law says here — and what is still to be confirmed

The material below has not been checked against the instruments it describes. It is set out rather than withheld so you can see exactly what is open, and so a professional reviewing this page knows what to check.

  • No Australian rule singles this medicine out at the point of sale. Nothing in the Therapeutic Goods Act, the state and territory poisons laws, or payments regulation treats a lawful prescription purchase differently from any other pharmacy transaction. confirm there is no Payments System Regulation or other instrument that bears on how pharmacy merchants are categorised.
  • Surcharges are capped, not banned. The Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (Cth) bans excessive payment surcharges by large businesses: the surcharge may not exceed the merchant's cost of acceptance for that payment method, and enforcement sits with the ACCC. identify the operative provisions and the current large-business threshold, and read them.
  • The overseas problem exists, but it is an overseas problem. In the United States, card networks assign cannabis merchants a merchant category that most processors decline, which is why dispensaries there run on cash. Australian pharmacies are ordinary merchants under an ordinary merchant category, and no equivalent Australian classification of medicinal cannabis transactions exists. confirm the Australian merchant-category treatment against a primary payments-sector source; this passage currently rests on the general structure of the schemes, not on a document this site has opened.

What happens if it goes wrong

If the surcharge looks wrong, ask the merchant what accepting your card costs them — a large business that cannot justify a surcharge against its actual costs is exposed to ACCC action, and the ACCC takes complaints through its website.

If the reason given is the medicine itself, ask for it in writing. Whatever the commercial reality behind a terminal, a patient told their lawful prescription makes them a payment problem is being told something no Australian rule supports — and a pharmacy that will say it in writing is a pharmacy that has decided to say it.

What to carry

  • The merchant's stated surcharge, photographed from the terminal or the counter sign
  • The receipt showing any surcharge as its own line

What to say

  • Ask what it costs the merchant to accept your card — the number the cap is measured against
  • Ask for any medicine-based refusal of card payment in writing, plainly and once

What not to do

  • Do not pay a surcharge that plainly exceeds the merchant's card cost without asking first
  • Do not accept a surcharge explained as a cannabis rule — there is no such Australian rule to explain it

Sources

Cite this page

Know Your Script, ‘Paying for a prescription: cash, card and surcharges’ (Australia-wide), https://www.knowyourscript.com.au/banking/pharmacy-card-payments/ (not yet checked against primary sources — not for citation).

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