In Australia, it is widely accepted that going out for a meal with friends will end with a calculator and wads of cash thrown in for the bill. Unless one in your party is willing to take the hit and chase their mates down for the cash, leaving forgetful friends in the red. 

Lately many local restaurants have put a stop to our dividing and tapping antics via a “no split bills” policy. It seems to be getting worse, and it’s not entirely clear why.

Why are restaurants and cafes sticking “no split bills” notes to their Eftpos machines more than ever, and what’s the deal with not being able to split the bill unevenly? After all, you skipped the dessert and your mate ordered the oysters and a martini.

Flavio Carnevale, the owner-operator of Marta in Rushcutters Bay and recently opened Martina in Rose Bay, says bank fees on card payment are largely to blame. “People don’t pay cash any more, and now the fees bank charge operators really add up,” he says. “After Covid, everyone pays with a card, even for tips.” 

Restaurants and cafes, like any shop accepting payments via card, incur costs when taking a payment from a customer. Different payment methods have different costs. Cards that provide significant rewards to consumers are typically more expensive for the merchant, according to the Reserve Bank of Australia. And special payment types can rack up extra fees, which is why some businesses won’t accept them at all.

When someone orders from the Roman-leading menu at Martina – think prosciutto with melon, vodka lasagne or cuttlefish spaghettoni – they can split the bill up to four ways, and the business takes most of the hit for each surcharge incurred.

“Banks divide the cost in different ways, either a percentage or each payment or a specific amount, and when it’s a set amount a split bill can be expensive to a restaurant,” says Carnevale.

Some restaurants add a surcharge to the bill – and there are strict rules on how much they are allowed to charge – essentially passing the cost of accepting more expensive payment methods back to the customers. At Martina and Marta they might pass on 40 to 50 percent of the charge on, says Carnevale. “You can’t pass the full cost of the credit card charge on, customers would be displeased.

According to the Reserve Bank of Australia guidelines, Australia has a relatively low-cost payments system by international standards, and in the two decades before 2021, the average cost of all card payments have fallen “significantly”. 

But Australian diners are already paying increased menu prices due to the rising cost of produce and wages, as well as GST, often service fees, plus tips. Adding yet another cost to the bill in the form of a credit card surcharge, as fair as it might be, makes many of us baulk. 

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“Overseas there is a culture for all these additional charges, but not here in Australia. There is no culture for it here. We’d have a revolution,” says Carnevale. “Do you remember when they started charging service fees? We have to use the machines, because Covid killed cash.”

There’s more to the “no split bills” movement than card surcharges, though. Restaurants are looking at their costs, finding ways to save as the margins of what it takes to run a business shrink. Interest rates and the cost of living, wage increases, rents and energy costs have impacted hospitality businesses as much as they have any household today. 

Split bills take more time for the staff to divide up the bills, and require waitstaff to process each individual payment – often skipping over the “leave a tip” prompt each time – and stand there while various parties ponder whether to divide everything evenly or cover Don because Maureen lost her job last week, and whether the sparkling water three people had was the same price as the still. The restaurant is meanwhile paying for the waitstaff’s time, the percentage of the bank charge not passed on to the table for each split of the bill, and processing time of the actual machine. In large restaurants, which seat 8 or 12 people at a table, this standing idle time is expensive.

Paying only for what you add – a common habit when dining with colleagues or in very large groups – can become messy as waitstaff is forced to do maths calculations and tick dishes off the bill as they’re paid for. If a restaurant allows split bills for larger groups, there is a little-known courtesy around diners making them equal to avoid the lost time to waitstaff. Tips should be added each time, or given as cash. Whatever the plan, the way the bill will be paid or split should be determined at the beginning of a meal, not at the end when the bill arrives and restaurant staff wait patiently (and expensively) by. 

Some card machines don’t divide the due amount automatically, adds Carnevale. “If each bill has to be split manually, the result might be wrong. Also tips are often forgotten as the last person is left with an uneven amount to pay. The bigger the group and the bigger the venue, the more likely it is that there will be a mistake.”

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Other machines do not enable split bills at all; a technology issue more than a business decision. When Carnevale first opened Martina, the new payment system using Square was not allowing anything but one 50-50 split of bills, a problem that has since been remedied. “We had to fix that. We want to make our customers happy and make it easy for them. It is called hospitality,” he laughs.

Consider, as well, the paperwork. A restaurant or cafe needs to keep a physical and digital copy of each sale – as opposed to each bill – for the next five years in case they are audited by the Australian Taxation Office. Split bills add such complexity to the paperwork of a business, that it can make a little “no split bills” notification on the bill seem like a most reasonable request. 

No split bills as a concept does have its positive side for the diner. It eliminates the immediate trauma around whether the non drinkers should pay the same as those who had cocktails, as well as the collective gulp when it’s revealed the bread and butter wasn’t free, and who had three courses anyway? “I’ll get it this time,” says someone in an ideal world, making a next-time gathering inevitable so you can pick up the cheque then. Or, we could go back to using cash.

There are dozens of apps that can take care of the restaurant maths, and there are now simple ways to transfer funds to the mate who paid the whole bill before you’ve even hailed a taxi home. No split bills might feel like a curse on your night out, but remember the good times with friends over steaks and Caprese salad, not the $7.20 Andrew still owes you.

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