Pred Dragila — who founded payments company Fat Zebra in 2012 — said card surcharges were becoming an additional revenue stream for payment providers, short-changing customers for no good reason.

He was speaking after Fat Zebra, which has a market value of about $225m, bought SecurePay from Australia Post — its third acquisition in a year as it seeks to take on bigger international rivals PayPal, Stripe and Adyen.

The Reserve Bank has opened the door for banning surcharges by next year, sparking the biggest shake-up of the payments industry in years and making the system fairer for consumers.

Mr Dragila said he understood the principle of surcharges but said the practice had spiralled out of control. He said retailers and merchants believed the practice should be free and consumers should be forced to fund transactions, rather than it being absorbed as a cost of doing business.

“Where I have an issue is when it’s heavily abused and manipulated for commercial gain,” he told The Australian.

“Ultimately, what we’re doing is that we’re allowing a market to not only increase the cost of acceptance, but penalise the consumer for that use. What we’ve seen is a raft of companies come out that are now charging really excessive rates on payments on the idea that it is fee-free Eftpos or fee-free processing because the consumer is being forced to pay.

“I think it’s been manipulated so much that it needs a bit of a shake-up because it’s consumers that are missing out now and that I don’t agree with.”

Merchants were often able to negotiate fees they paid on transactions to near 1 per cent while most payment terminals were automatically set to an amount closer to 2 per cent, he said.

It had set a surplus which was eating into the wallets of consumers without reason.

“I personally feel it’s being gamed and it needs (to be assessed). There needs to be stricter rules around it … I think that ultimately, it’ll probably lead to a ban like the UK.”

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the government was “prepared to ban debit card surcharges”, subject to further work by the RBA and safeguards to ensure both small businesses and consumers can benefit from lower costs.

“The declining use of cash and the rise of electronic payments means that more Australians are getting slugged by surcharges, even when they use their own money,” Mr Albanese said.

Mr Dragila said the RBA could push to end surcharges altogether as consumers had become powerless against them.

SecurePay is a payments system used by 35,000 merchants. Mr Dragila said following the acquisition Fat Zebra would handle about one fifth of all eCommerce transactions.

The company did not disclose how much it would pay. Crunchbase has recorded Australia Post acquired SecurePay from Advent Capital for almost $48m in 2010.

Mr Dragila’s suggestion of a blanket ban to surcharges is at odds with Tyro chief executive Jon Davey, who said businesses should not fund the consumer benefits which come with high-cost cards like loyalty programs — such as frequent flyer programs.

“We support any review that assesses the true cost of card acceptance, including both debit and credit, for the fair regulation of payment acceptance in Australia,” Mr Davey said last year.

But, Paul Weingarth, co-founder of smart receipt platform Slyp, said retailers were happy to fund loyalty programs — provided they also gain a benefit.

Slyp has launched a new product, Go Rewards, which integrates stock keeping unit (SKU) level receipt data to deliver data and insights aimed at bringing retailers and suppliers closer to the consumer. It allows loyalty points to be funded not from credit card surcharges — the traditional model being up-ended — but the supplier or retailer, if a customer opts-in.