There's a number in Australian payments regulation that I think acquirers anywhere should look at, and the reason has nothing to do with Australia.
The RBA publishes what card networks actually charge acquirers, net of rebates, split by domestic and cross-border. Almost no one else does.
Most markets publish less. The US reports an aggregate debit network fee number. The UK measured how fast fees to acquirers have grown. Canada, Mexico, Brazil and Japan each disclose different parts of the cost stack. Useful, all of it, and none of it tells an acquirer what its own cross-border position looks like.
The 2024/25 Australian figures came out in March.
Domestic network (scheme) fees cost Australian acquirers 10.5 basis points of transaction value. Cross-border cost 158.2.
Cross-border made up about a third of every net scheme fee dollar those acquirers paid, on roughly 3% of the value they acquired.
That's one market. Different mix, different rules, different networks, and the RBA is careful to say its numbers don't transfer.
But I keep coming back to the same thought. The shape of that gap is not unique to Australia. I think Australia is just the only place it gets measured where anyone can see it.
You can test it yourself without waiting for a regulator. Take your network fee line for a quarter. Split it by where the card was issued, not where the merchant sits. Divide each side by its own transaction value.
In my experience most institutions may struggle to do that split cleanly on the first attempt. The fees arrive blended, the invoice doesn't carry the geography, and internal reporting rolls up before anyone can separate it.
Which is the actual issue. Not that cross-border costs more. That you often can't see it until your mix has already moved and taken the margin with it.
The Australian data sits in a regulatory briefing we've put together on what regulators across seven markets have concluded about network fees. Every figure sourced to the original publication.