Following the Reserve Bank of Australia's (RBA) decision, card surcharges on EFTPOS, Visa, and Mastercard payments will be removed starting on October 1, 2026. This means that Australian merchants will need to review how payment processing costs are accounted for.
The AI Menu Pricing Assistant allows you to review, adjust, and schedule your menu price changes in preparation for this surcharge removal. Australian merchants using Lightspeed Payments or another payment provider can use this tool to update menu prices without manually editing individual products.
What's in this guide?
Configuring your new pricing
Frequently asked questions
Configuring your new pricing
You can configure your pricing settings to account for your current payment processing cost and generate updated price recommendations. To review your processing cost, go to your Lightspeed Payments integration settings or contact your Lightspeed Account Manager for assistance.
The AI Menu Pricing Assistant provides general price modelling based on the information you enter and is intended to help you prepare for the removal of card surcharges. You are responsible for reviewing changes, ensuring they meet your business requirements, and complying with applicable laws.
To configure your new pricing:
- Log in to Back Office with your Lightspeed credentials.
- From the navigation menu, select Products.
- In the Menu Pricing Assistant banner, click Learn more. Alternatively, you can select the Menu Pricing Assistant tab to access the tool.
- Click Start drafting prices.
- In the Price review setup screen, complete the following:
- Current payment cost rate: Your processing fee as listed in your Lightspeed Payments contract or provided by your third-party payment provider.
- Maximum increase: The highest percentage any product price can increase during the price review. No item will receive a recommended price increase above this limit.
- Round prices: Automatically round prices according to your selected rounding preferences for each price range. For example, items under $10 can be rounded to the nearest $0.50, while items above $10 can be rounded to the nearest whole dollar. This helps maintain a consistent pricing structure across your catalog.
- Exclude categories: The product categories you choose to remove from the price review. Items in the excluded categories are not calculated for new price recommendations.
- Click Continue to draft new prices.
- Review the new pricing recommendation for each product. The review screen provides an overview of your recommended price changes:
- Items updated: The number of products with recommended price changes.
- Average increase: The average percentage increase across all updated products.
- Estimated 30-day impact: The estimated impact of the new pricing based on your historical sales data. This helps you understand the potential effect of the changes on your revenue.
- (Optional) To manually change the recommended price for an item, enter a new value in the New price column for the product.
- (Optional) To download a copy of the recommended menu for offline review, click Export as a CSV.
- Once you're finished, select Save and schedule. If you prefer to just save as a draft and review the changes later, select Save and exit.
- Choose when the new prices should take effect:
- 1 October 2026: The new prices will automatically take effect on October 1, 2026.
- Custom date and time: Use the calendar to select your preferred date and time for the new prices to take effect.
- Apply now: The new prices will take effect immediately after you click Schedule change.
- Click Schedule change.
Frequently asked questions
Yes. Before the scheduled date, you can review or update your pricing changes by navigating to the Menu Pricing Assistant tab and selecting View or edit prices. You can also cancel the scheduled change from the same section. Once the new prices have been applied, any further adjustments will need to be made through the normal product pricing settings.
The AI Menu Pricing Assistant configures company-level pricing. If you have multiple sites with designated price lists, those are not affected and will continue using their existing prices. After configuring the company-level pricing, you can optionally configure price lists for individual sites.
The recommended prices are calculated based on the payment cost rate you enter. If the rate is incorrect, the prices may not accurately account for your processing costs. Before the new prices are applied, you can delete the scheduled changes and redo the pricing review using the correct settings.
What's next?
Import your existing menu and create products in your Lightspeed Restaurant catalog.
Manage pricing schedules and automate discounts or surcharges.