QANTAS will soon impose a surcharge of 1 per cent on customers using credit cards to buy tickets.

The surcharge follows Reserve Bank reforms enabling companies to recoup the cost of credit card transactions.

Qantas spokesman John Borghetti said credit card merchant fees were a significant and increasing cost to Qantas.

“We will continue to absorb significant costs from credit card merchant fees,” he said.

“This nominal 1 per cent surcharge will recover less than half the cost of credit card merchant fees charged to Qantas each year.

“We simply cannot continue to absorb the increasingly broad range of charges imposed on our business at a time when domestic air fares are at historical lows.”

Customers can avoid the surcharge by paying cash or cheque at travel agents.

Opposition finance spokesman Stephen Conroy condemned Qantas for introducing the surcharge without providing a discount for cash.

Senator Conroy called on the federal Government to write to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to authorise surveillance of theimplementation of credit card reforms.

“Unless surveillance powers are granted to the ACCC, consumers will continue to be ripped off by the sort of big business profiteering we are now witnessing from Qantas,” Senator Conroy said.

Reserve Bank reforms, introduced on January 1, give merchants the right to recover from their customers the bank charges for handling credit cards. The banks charge between 1 per cent and 4 per cent of the value of the transaction.