Ten days ago we reported that Aldi had taken EPAL to court over lack of transparency in their proposal to charge retailers a fee for debit card transactions.
The High Court ruled that EPAL had made misleading statements and they have been ordered to publish corrective advertisements. As we understand it, the court was not asked to rule on the legitimacy of the fee, only the issue of transparency.
However, as a result of the significant publicity, Commonwealth Bank has announced it will not be passing on the fee to its existing merchants, and new merchants will pay half the industry fee. The bank made some noise about not wishing to unfairly burden retailers in tough times. Other banks are expected to follow.
Once again, we say thank you to Aldi.