Drip Pricing and Shipping Fees: ACL Rules for Shopify

Quick answer: Drip pricing is advertising a price at the start of an online purchase and adding fees as the shopper moves through checkout. The ACCC says businesses must be upfront about which fees will apply and when, and must show the total price as a single figure that includes taxes such as GST and any unavoidable or pre-selected extra fees. Whether shipping has to sit inside that figure depends on how your store charges it, and the sources I read do not give one answer for every store. The direction the regulator is pushing is also the direction checkout data points: show the cost early (general information, not legal advice).

Many founders meet this problem as a conversion number: people add to cart, reach the shipping step, see a total higher than the price they remember, and leave. You fix it as a CRO problem by moving the cost earlier, testing and measuring.

In Australia the same screen is also something the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) looks at. The ACCC calls the pattern drip pricing, it has taken action against it, and new drip pricing rules are part of reforms due from 1 July 2027. I am a conversion and search practitioner, not a lawyer, so I will not tell you that any Shopify set-up is compliant. I can lay out what the regulator has said, show where Shopify displays GST, shipping and surcharges, and give you a way to test your own store.

This post is only about how prices and fees are displayed. It is not a general checkout-friction guide (that is the checkout leakage audit), and it does not cover was/now pricing (see was/now pricing rules for Shopify). It covers Australian customers under Australian law; I have not reviewed US rules.

What drip pricing is, in the ACCC’s words

The ACCC’s price displays page describes drip pricing as a price advertised at the beginning of an online purchase, with extra fees and charges (it gives booking and service fees as examples) gradually added during the purchase process. It says businesses must be upfront and clearly disclose, at the start of a purchasing process, the types of fees that will apply and when. It also says businesses risk losing customers if they are not upfront about pricing, which is the CRO argument in one sentence.

Two limits are worth knowing before you read on.

• Charging a fee is not the problem. In a 2014 release about ticketing companies, the ACCC said the law does not prevent traders from charging fees, but it does require that they are disclosed clearly. The problem is the timing and the prominence.
• You cannot get a ruling by asking. The ACCC’s page says it does not give legal advice to businesses about how they display prices and does not resolve individual disputes about price displays. For anything borderline, you need your own adviser.

The two layers of law

As at 31 October 2026, drip pricing is policed through rules that already exist. Treasury’s Decision Regulation Impact Statement (December 2025) says the Australian Consumer Law (ACL) bars misleading price conduct and representations, but has no specific requirement to disclose mandatory per-transaction fees prominently and upfront. It also describes section 48 of the ACL: a business must not state part of a price without stating the minimum quantifiable price as a single figure, at least as prominently.

The second layer is a new drip pricing provision, covered below. The first applies to your store today; the second is coming.

The single-price test, cost by cost

The ACCC page sets out what the “total price” has to be. It must be shown as a single figure, and it must be the minimum total cost: the lowest amount a customer could pay, including taxes, duties and unavoidable or pre-selected extra fees. If a business also shows a price for one part of a product, the total has to be at least as prominent as the part.

Here is how the ACCC’s categories map onto the things a Shopify store tends to charge.

The last row has a catch. The ACCC’s example is a serviced apartment with a per-person cleaning fee. The business cannot know the guest count until someone books, but at least one person will stay, so the ACCC says it should include one cleaning fee in the advertised price, then give the full total once the count is known. The lesson: include the part of a charge you can know, and do not treat “I can’t calculate it exactly” as a reason to show nothing.

The surcharge you can no longer charge

The ACCC page also states that businesses can no longer charge a surcharge on payments made with Visa, Mastercard, American Express or eftpos credit, debit or prepaid cards from 1 October 2026. Other fees not based on how the customer pays are still allowed, but businesses must not mislead consumers about what they will be charged or why, and should display them prominently so customers see them before deciding. Our guide to the card surcharge ban for Shopify stores shows where a leftover surcharge can hide.

Where does shipping sit?

Many Shopify founders ask this, and the honest answer is that the ACCC’s price displays page does not address postage for an online-only store head-on. What I could read depends on the set-up:

The second row is not me telling you postage must be in your headline price, or that it need not be. The WA agency applies the same ACL, but the ACCC page does not say the same thing in the same words, and business.gov.au says only that the total does not need to include optional charges such as delivery fees, which fits the first row. If you charge unavoidable delivery on every order, a professional opinion is worth paying for. Showing the rate beside the price costs you very little either way.

What the ACCC has actually pursued

Three matters are useful because each one maps to something a store can do by accident. I read each release in full.

Dendy Cinema (25 June 2025). Dendy paid a penalty after the ACCC issued an infringement notice. The ACCC alleged that Dendy breached the ACL by failing to prominently show the total single price of tickets, including an unavoidable per-ticket booking fee, at the earliest opportunity in the booking process. Instead, it said, Dendy displayed prices without the fee and showed a total only at the final stages. The release also says paying an infringement notice is not an admission of a contravention. I have left out the dollar amount, because one cinema chain’s figure says nothing about what another business would face.

What a store can take from it: the test is about the first place a price appears, not the last. A clean final screen does not help if the collection page and cart showed a lower number.

Bloomex (15 March 2024). This is the closest to an online store. The Federal Court ordered a penalty after the online florist admitted breaches that included failing to adequately disclose a surcharge, ranging from $1.95 to $4.95, on orders made through its website. The same case covered misleading star ratings and strikethrough prices. The ACCC’s Commissioner said businesses must clearly disclose the total price, including what types of fees will apply. The Court also imposed injunctions and ordered a compliance program.

What a store can take from it: a surcharge of a few dollars was part of the matter, so size is no defence on its own.

Jetstar and Virgin Australia (17 November 2015). The Federal Court found that each airline made false or misleading representations about the price of particular advertised fares. The ACCC’s case was that a booking and service fee, charged on most credit card and PayPal payments, was disclosed only after several stages of booking. The Court did not accept every allegation: it found against Jetstar’s website in 2013, Jetstar’s mobile site in 2014 and Virgin’s mobile site in 2014, and held the ACCC had not established its claims for Jetstar’s 2014 website, Virgin’s website or either airline’s 2014 promotional emails.

What a store can take from it: courts look at the specific page and channel where the price was shown. Mobile, desktop and email can differ, so check each.

On priorities: the Dendy release names “misleading surcharging practices and other add on costs” as an ACCC enforcement priority for 2025-26, and the ACCC’s 2026-27 announcement (19 February 2026) says it will step up education and compliance work as the new reforms arrive.

The law that starts on 1 July 2027

The Competition and Consumer Amendment (Unfair Trading Practices) Bill 2026 passed Parliament on 2 July 2026, according to the Government’s media release of that date, with unfair trading practices and subscription traps banned from 1 July 2027. The ACCC Chair’s 2026 speech refers to the Act and lists “enhanced protections against drip pricing” among its reforms. Treasury’s consultation page gave 1 July 2027 as the proposed start. I have not found a separate start date for the drip pricing part alone, so check the Act.

The most detailed description of the drip pricing provision that I could read is the Parliamentary Library’s Bills Digest (5 May 2026), which describes the Bill as introduced. According to the digest:

• A business that offers goods or services at a “base price” must disclose the amount of any applicable “transaction based charge” alongside that base price where the charge can be calculated. Where it cannot be calculated in advance, the business must disclose the method for calculating it.
• A transaction based charge is generally a charge payable in connection with the supply, calculated by reference to the particular transaction or the way it is carried out (the digest’s examples are booking and service fees), rather than part of the base price.
• Optional charges, and taxes, duties, fees, levies or charges imposed on the supplier, are excluded, and regulations can prescribe further exclusions.
• It applies to goods and services ordinarily acquired for personal, domestic or household use, not offers made exclusively to a body corporate.
• Breaches are subject to the ACL’s civil penalty regime.

Treasury’s Decision RIS, written before the Bill was drafted, described the intended duty as disclosing the fee and its amount as early as possible once the business can first quantify it, and prominently: not in fine print and not behind another page or pop-up. Its example of a per-transaction fee was a mandatory handling fee applied per order regardless of the number of items. That is a policy description, not the Act’s text.

What I do not know, and will not guess: whether a delivery charge counts as a transaction based charge under the final Act, and whether regulations will carve any out. The digest’s examples are booking and service fees. If you charge a separate handling, packing or service line on top of postage, take advice on that line first.

What you can do now is design in the direction these sources point: show mandatory charges next to the price, early, in plain words, and say how a variable charge is worked out.

Where Shopify shows GST, shipping and surcharges

Here is where each cost can first appear on a Shopify store, according to Shopify’s own documentation.

The product page and collection cards: GST

Shopify’s help centre says that by default it displays product prices without including sales tax or value-added tax, and tax is added at checkout. To include tax, you go to Settings > Taxes and duties and select “Include sales tax in product price and shipping rate”. Shopify says the included tax amount is then shown next to the total at checkout, and that the tax is worked out from the price you set.

Check which setting your store uses. If your prices exclude GST, a shopper who sees $89 on the product page meets GST for the first time at checkout. For an Australian consumer store, that is the first thing I would test against the ACCC’s GST example above.

Markets adds a wrinkle. Shopify lists Australia among the regions where tax-inclusive prices apply, and you set a per-market “Dynamic” tax display under Markets. Shopify says that with dynamic tax-inclusive pricing, checkout shows prices correctly, but product pages and the cart may not unless you sell in local currencies with Shopify Payments, or the customer is in an eligible region with cookies enabled, an uncleared cache and not in incognito mode. So test twice, as a first-time visitor in a private window and then in a normal browser, comparing the product page, cart and checkout for the same item. Shopify also says accelerated checkout buttons are not supported with customer-country-based tax inclusion, so check what your express buttons show.

If you also sell overseas, duties and local taxes add more cases. Those are covered in Shopify Markets for Australian stores selling overseas.

The cart: the line shoppers read

Shopify’s reference theme, Dawn, carries default cart messages that depend on your tax setting. In the theme’s English language file on GitHub (read 31 October 2026), the options include:

• “Taxes included. Discounts and shipping calculated at checkout.”
• “Taxes, discounts and shipping calculated at checkout.”

The second is the one that appears when prices exclude tax. Your theme may differ, so read the line in your own cart: it may be the first place a shopper learns more is coming.

Shopify’s shipping documentation adds three points:

• Customers are not offered any shipping rates until they enter a delivery address, and the cheapest rate is selected by default.
• Flat-rate shipping is predictable and lets you set clear expectations before checkout and avoid checkout abandonment.
• Carrier-calculated rates cannot be displayed before checkout, which Shopify says can lead to unexpected shipping costs and cause customers to abandon the purchase.

There is a way to estimate shipping in the cart. Shopify’s Cart Ajax API has a prepare_shipping_rates.json endpoint that starts a rate calculation for a destination and an async_shipping_rates.json endpoint that returns the results, so a developer can build a postcode estimator. Shopify notes the calculation can take a while, so the page has to wait for it.

Checkout: where the total finally shows

At checkout the shopper enters an address and sees the rates that apply to the order. Check what the cheapest default is, whether any line has appeared that was not on the cart, and whether the total matches what the shopper could have worked out on the cart page.

Apps and add-ons: the ones that pre-select themselves

The ACCC’s pre-selected rule matters most here. Test any app, theme feature or checkout extension that adds a default-on charge (shipping protection, delivery insurance, a donation, a warranty, gift wrap) as a shopper sees it: is the box ticked, and is the charge in the total shown before payment? Under the ACCC’s wording, a pre-selected extra belongs in the total price. Its carbon offset example, which is not pre-selected, shows the safer pattern: leave it off by default.

The ACCC page also covers payment method discounts: the price displayed must be the full price a consumer pays without the discount, and a discounted price can be shown alongside it, but not more prominently and not on its own.

What the shopper sees, in numbers

Here is an illustrative example. The numbers are mine, not data from any store. A product costs $89. GST is 10% (the ATO describes GST as a broad-based tax of 10%). Shipping is a $9.95 flat rate, free over $150, and I have treated the $9.95 as already including any GST on it.

In set-up B, the GST inside the $89 is one-eleventh of it, about $8.09. In A, the shopper pays $18.85 more than the number they saw before they had typed a single address detail.

I am not claiming C converts better than B on your store. In C, the number in the shopper’s head and the number on the payment screen match, which is what the regulator and the checkout research both point towards.

Why this is also the CRO fix

Baymard Institute’s cart abandonment page (last updated 22 September 2025, as read on 31 October 2026) lists “extra costs too high (shipping, tax, fees)” at 40% and “total order cost not visible or calculable up front” at 12% among its reasons for abandonment. The listed percentages add to well over 100%, so shoppers could give more than one reason. The page does not state the sample or method for that list, or whether it includes Australian shoppers, so treat 40% as a direction and not a forecast for your store.

Nobody can promise a lift from showing costs earlier. Here is how to find out what it does on your store:

1. Before you change anything, record your checkout completion rate: the share of sessions that start checkout and then buy, by device, for at least four recent weeks.
2. Make one change at a time (for example, GST-inclusive pricing, or a shipping line beside Add to cart).
3. Compare the same measure afterwards, by device, for a matching period, and note anything else that changed (a sale, a new ad campaign, a theme update).
4. Keep your conversion baseline and your GA4 and Shopify numbers straight, so you compare like with like.

Our guide to surprise checkout costs goes deeper on measurement, the shipping and returns messaging guide covers what to say on the page, and the Australian returns policy page guide covers the returns side.

A 30-minute price display audit

Do this on a phone, as a first-time visitor in a private window.

1. Walk one order to the payment screen. Pick an item you actually sell. Add it to the cart, enter a real Australian address, and stop before you pay. Screenshot every step with the prices visible.
2. Repeat for each shipping zone. Use a metro postcode, a regional one and a remote one. Different rates are where surprises hide.
3. Write down the first screen where each cost appears. GST, shipping, handling, any surcharge, any add-on. If one first appears at checkout, note whether it could have appeared earlier.
4. Compare the price for the same item everywhere. Collection card, product page, cart, checkout. The ACCC says that if the price at checkout does not match the displayed price, even by mistake, the business must sell at the lower price or stop selling the item until it is corrected. Mismatches can come from dynamic tax display, discount apps or cached pages.
5. Look for anything pre-ticked. Shipping protection, gift wrap, donations, warranties. If it is charged unless removed, it belongs in the total shown.
6. Look for fees with vague names. “Handling”, “processing”, “packaging”, “service”, “eco”, “minimum order fee”. Ask whether the shopper can see each before checkout.
7. Check for card surcharges. After 1 October 2026 the ACCC says they cannot be charged on the cards listed above. Check apps, payment settings and any custom line items.
8. Check payment method discounts. The full price should be displayed, with any discounted price alongside and not more prominent.
9. Check every channel. Compare the price in your emails, ads, product feed and social posts with the store. The ACCC says its rule against wrong or false-impression prices covers prices displayed in advertising and whenever communicating with customers.
10. Keep dated screenshots of what you found and changed.

Wording patterns that read clearly

These are examples of plain writing, not legally cleared text. Adapt them to your own rates.

• Beside Add to cart: “Free shipping over $150. Otherwise $9.95 flat rate Australia-wide.”
• Variable rates: “Shipping from $X, calculated by postcode. Free over $150.” Link to an estimator or the shipping policy.
• Cart: “Prices include GST. Shipping: $9.95 (free over $150).”

Do not leave “Shipping calculated at checkout” as the only note when you already know a flat rate. If the number is known, say it.

Key takeaways

• The ACCC says businesses must be upfront about which fees apply and when, and show the total price as a single figure that includes taxes such as GST and any unavoidable or pre-selected extra fees.
• Optional extras and charges that cannot be quantified yet are treated differently. Whether postage sits inside the total depends on how you charge it, and the sources I read do not give one answer. Take advice on unavoidable delivery, and show it early either way.
• The ACCC’s matters (Dendy, Bloomex, Jetstar and Virgin) involved fees disclosed late or inadequately, including a small online surcharge. The Jetstar and Virgin findings turned on the specific page and channel.
• The Competition and Consumer Amendment (Unfair Trading Practices) Act 2026 includes new drip pricing protections, and the ACCC Chair gives 1 July 2027 for its general prohibition. Check the final text and regulations for how delivery and handling charges are treated.
• On Shopify, check the tax-inclusive setting, the cart message, shipping rate display, pre-ticked apps and card surcharges, on a phone, with real postcodes.
• Showing the full cost early is also the checkout fix. Measure it by device against your own baseline and do not expect a promised lift.

FAQs

Is drip pricing illegal in Australia?

It can be. Charging a fee is lawful, but the ACL already bars misleading price conduct and requires a single total price, and the ACCC has acted under those rules (Dendy, Bloomex, Jetstar and Virgin). As at 31 October 2026, Treasury’s Decision RIS says the ACL has no specific requirement to disclose per-transaction fees prominently and upfront. The Competition and Consumer Amendment (Unfair Trading Practices) Act 2026 adds a drip pricing provision. The ACCC Chair’s speech gives 1 July 2027 for the general prohibition, so check the Act for when the drip pricing part starts. Whether a practice on your store is a problem is a question for your adviser (this is not legal advice).

Do I have to include shipping in my Shopify product prices?

I cannot give you a blanket answer. The ACCC’s page says optional delivery fees need not be in displayed prices where shoppers can choose free click and collect. Western Australia’s regulator says a single price does not usually have to include postage unless the business is aware of a minimum charge that must be paid. If you only deliver and charge a known flat rate, take advice, and show the rate beside the price meanwhile.

Does my price have to include GST?

The ACCC says the total price must include taxes, and its example is that an advertised holiday price must include GST. Prices shown only to other businesses do not need it. On Shopify, check Settings > Taxes and duties and your Markets tax display, then test as a first-time visitor.

What changes on 1 July 2027?

The Act adds a general ban on unfair trading practices, subscription rules and a drip pricing provision. As introduced, that provision required a business offering a base price to disclose any applicable transaction based charge alongside it, or the method of calculating it. Read the Act and any regulations for the final scope.

Can I offer express shipping or gift wrap as an extra?

Per the ACCC page, an extra that is not pre-selected need not be in the total price, while a pre-selected one must be (its example is carbon offsets versus seat selection). Leave optional extras unticked.

Will showing shipping early hurt my conversion rate?

I cannot promise either result. Baymard and Shopify both link unexpected costs to abandonment, but your store is your own test. Measure checkout completion by device before and after.

Want someone to walk your checkout as a first-time buyer?

A cost surprise is easy to miss when you know your own store. We are not lawyers and do not give legal advice, so anything on the legal side goes to your adviser. For a second look at the path from cart to payment, book a free 30-minute diagnostic or tell us about your store: we share your Shopify store on screen and name two or three conversion leaks live, and tell you whether they are worth fixing. No pitch. You can also see how our Shopify CRO service works.