What the RBA changed
The Reserve Bank's retail payments reforms, in force 1 October 2026.
For the better part of two decades, Australians have paid a small toll for tapping a card. A coffee was a dollar more on Visa. A flight carried a "payment fee" at the final step. On 1 October 2026 the Reserve Bank of Australia ended the toll, and in the same package did something quieter that matters more.
The reforms are best known for the surcharge ban: from 1 October, merchants can no longer add a fee for paying by eftpos, Mastercard, Visa, American Express or UnionPay. But the quieter half of the package matters more here. The Bank also cut the cap on interchange, the wholesale fee a merchant's bank pays the cardholder's bank on every transaction.
The intent is that the saving flows to merchants in lower service fees, offsetting the surcharge revenue they lost. The side effect is that the pool funding rewards points shrank by more than half overnight. NAB reduced bonus-point offers and earn rates across its rewards range, including the NAB Qantas cards, as a direct result. Other issuers did the same.
Weekend and public-holiday surcharges, booking fees and service fees sit outside the ban. Commercial cards keep the 0.8% cap. Foreign-issued cards get their cut from 1 April 2027.
Why a bank just opened a travel agency
NAB Travel, powered by Expedia, launched a fortnight before the fee cut.
Neither NAB nor Expedia publicly cites the Reserve Bank's reforms as the reason for their partnership, so the link is inferred from timing and economics rather than stated. But the fit is close. To see why, you need two things: what NAB Travel actually is, and what the RBA did to interchange fees on 1 October (see chapter i).
What NAB Travel is
It is an Expedia-powered booking marketplace inside NAB's app, launched in September 2026, two weeks before the reforms took effect. Flights, hotels, car hire, packages and experiences, all bookable without leaving the bank. NAB Rewards cardholders earn bonus points on hotels, car hire, activities and packages. Flights are excluded.
The official story is consumer appetite. Expedia's research found 72 per cent of Australians would book travel through a non-travel loyalty program if they could earn points.
How the two connect
- Rewards points were funded by interchange.When you paid with a credit card, the merchant's bank paid NAB up to 0.8% of the transaction, and NAB used that to fund points. The cap is now 0.3%, so that funding pool shrank by over half.
- Banks responded by cutting earn rates.Point Hacks reports NAB reduced bonus point offers and earn rates across its rewards range, including the NAB Qantas cards, as a direct result of the 1 October changes. Other issuers did the same.
- NAB Travel is a new funding source for points.When a customer books through the marketplace, Expedia pays NAB a commission on the booking. That revenue, not interchange, funds the bonus points. It lets NAB keep its rewards proposition attractive without relying on the fee the RBA just cut.
- It also shifts rewards toward closed-loop spend.Rather than rewarding every purchase anywhere, the bank steers points toward channels where it earns margin. Expect more bank-owned travel portals and shopping marketplaces for the same reason.
The data angle
If a bank and the world's largest online travel agency share a customer, the obvious next question is whether they share the customer's data. The short answer is that nothing public says they do, but the plumbing is in place and both companies' policies would permit it.
What is confirmed
from the published terms- Expedia runs the site, not NAB. The terms name Expedia Inc as the operator and the booking domain as NABTravelbyExpedia.com.au.
- NAB passes authentication across. Your NAB or MyCard
banking credentials are automatically used to authenticate you
, though the two accounts arenot linked
. - The stated deal is revenue share. NAB
will receive a portion of the revenue generated from bookings
. No data-sharing clause is published. - The terms never mention NAB in the privacy section. They simply incorporate Expedia's own privacy statement.
What is permitted
from each company's privacy policy- Expedia will
share your personal information with that partner to assist in marketing
when it promotes an offer with a business partner. - Expedia analyses
browsing and/or purchase history
tooptimize advertising and marketing
, and discloses data tothird-party marketing partners for targeted advertising
, including lookalike audiences on social platforms. - NAB may disclose to
organisations the NAB Group has an arrangement with to jointly offer products
. - NAB may combine its data with
information appropriately collected from external sources
togain insights about you and your preferences and interests
.
Put the two columns together and three flows are plausible.
- NAB → Expedialikely minimal
Identity and rewards eligibility, since Expedia must know which card tier earns 5× versus 3×. A bank handing a merchant its transaction history would be a serious step under Australian privacy law and the Banking Code, and nothing suggests it.
- Expedia → NABalmost certain
Booking confirmations, because NAB has to credit the bonus points. That alone gives NAB destination, dates, spend and party size per customer: rich signal for its own marketing of travel insurance, foreign exchange or card upgrades.
- Expedia → ad networksdefault behaviour
Expedia's own behavioural tracking and retargeting apply on the booking site unless switched off for this partner. Whether NAB customers are excluded from Expedia's wider advertising pool is not stated anywhere public.
The one document that would settle it is NAB's in-app collection notice, shown the first time a customer opens NAB Travel. It is not published on the public site. Hold this picture of identified data crossing between two companies. Chapter iii is a partnership built the other way round.
So, is it related?
Indirectly, and by inference rather than admission. The surcharge ban is the less relevant half of the reform here. The interchange cut is the piece that matters for this partnership: it removed the subsidy that paid for rewards, and NAB Travel replaces it with a revenue stream the regulator does not touch. Whether customer data travels with it is permitted by both sides and disclosed by neither.
The other kind of data partnership
Qantas and Optus, 2021 to 2024: the same shape of deal, built the opposite way round.
Chapter ii left us with a partnership where the customer's identity and booking data move, identified, between a bank and a travel agency. That is one way to build a points deal. There is a second way, and an airline and a telco ran it for three years. Set the two side by side and you get a clean picture of what a "data partnership" can mean.
The deal
From November 2021 to April 2024, Optus sold three Qantas-branded mobile plans. Each earned Qantas Points on the monthly fee, plus a sign-up bonus paid in instalments for staying connected.
| Plan | Data | Earn | Bonus | Paid out |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $39 / month | 30GB | 5 pts per $1 | 5,000 | after 3 months connected |
| $59 / month | 100GB | 5 pts per $1 | 10,000 | 5,000 every 3 months, over 6 |
| $79 / month | 150GB + roaming | 10 pts per $1 | 20,000 | 5,000 every 3 months, over 12 |
Notice who sold them. The plans were available exclusively through qantas.com/optus
. You entered via Qantas, supplied your Frequent Flyer number, and only then did Optus bill you. Compare NAB Travel, where you enter via the bank and are handed to Expedia's site. Same two-party structure, opposite direction: here the loyalty program is the front door and the partner sits behind it.
What crossed between them
The points mechanics fix the minimum data flow. To pay 5 points per dollar and release a tranche at the end of every three months that you stay connected
, Optus had to report to Qantas each month, per member number, the plan tier, the fee paid and whether the service was still active. That is a steady, identified feed of who is an Optus customer and what they spend, keyed to a Qantas identity. The press release even nudged members to pay the bill with a Qantas Points credit card, giving Qantas a second view of the same bill through its bank partners.
So far this looks like the NAB case: identified data crossing a company boundary. The difference is what happens next.
- Optus → Qantasidentified
Member number, plan tier, monthly spend, connection status. Qantas's policy says it collects from partners
when you register through one of our program partners or transact with them
, runsdata matching activities
, and combines the result with Census data togenerate consumer insights that help us to market more efficiently
. - Qantas → Optusnone, audited
The OAIC's 2019 assessment found Qantas Frequent Flyer
does not permit access to, or disclosure of, member's personal information to any of its program partners
, that analytics run de-identified, and that partner contracts stateonly QFF may contact members about partner products
. - Qantas → advertisersanonymised
Qantas Loyalty's media and analytics arm, Red Planet, has sold targeted advertising built on loyalty data since 2014, with Frequent Flyer partners as its first clients. The targeting happens inside Qantas; clients get the audience, not the member list.
Why Optus never needed the data
This is the subtle part. Optus did not buy a list of frequent flyers. It paid Qantas to aim Optus plans at 13 million profiled members using Qantas's own picture of them, and to be the only party that contacted them. Qantas kept the data and sold the targeting. Optus got new customers who arrived pre-tagged as frequent flyers, and its own policy, updated July 2026, lets it use that tag: deriving insights about you and the brands and companies or third parties you enjoy
, shared with providers of targeted advertising platforms
.
Each side gained something, and no member record had to change hands. Qantas enriched its profile of every member who took a plan. Optus acquired a high-value segment it could not have identified on its own. The member paid for both with their monthly bill and their attention.
The Optus deal ended by mutual agreement in April 2024 with no reason given. Its design hints at one: the plans were Qantas-branded and Qantas-sold, so Optus acquired customers whose loyalty was to the points, and the data that explained them stayed at Qantas. The anonymised model protects the member, and it also protects the loyalty program's monopoly on knowing them. Chapter iv puts the two systems side by side.
Two models, side by side
The same deal shape, two opposite answers to who gets the data.
Put the two systems next to each other and the difference is visible before you read a label. In one, the solid red lines of identified data run through the partner. In the other, they stop at the loyalty program, and everything that leaves is dashed.
NAB × Expedia
Direct and identified- Front door
- The bank
- Who you deal with
- Expedia, on its own site
- What crosses
- Your identity to Expedia; your bookings back to NAB
- Who targets
- Expedia, by default, with its own tracking
- Anonymised?
- No
- Disclosed by
- Nobody yet
Qantas × Optus
Mediated and anonymised- Front door
- The loyalty program
- Who you deal with
- Qantas first, then Optus bills you
- What crosses
- Your plan and spend to Qantas; nothing back
- Who targets
- Qantas, on the partner's behalf
- Anonymised?
- Yes, outward; audited by the OAIC
- Disclosed by
- Both policies and the regulator
Two models, one question
In the NAB model the partner runs the platform and the customer's data goes with them, identified, in both directions. In the Qantas model the loyalty program keeps every record, sells the targeting, and hands the partner an audience rather than a list. The second is more sophisticated and, on the evidence, more private. It is also the one with an audit trail. The first is the one every bank is about to copy.
Sources
Everything above traces back to one of these.
- Expedia Group partners with NAB to launch NAB TravelTravel Weekly, 18 September 2026
- Velocity bonus before the RBA's October changesExecutive Traveller
- NAB Travel by Expedia terms of serviceExpedia Inc, revised 1 June 2026 (PDF)
- Expedia Group privacy statementExpedia Group
- Expedia B2B privacy statementExpedia Group
- Qantas Frequent Flyer and Optus announce new partnershipQantas newsroom, 22 November 2021
- Optus and Qantas end points partnershipAustralian Frequent Flyer
- Management of personal information: Qantas Frequent FlyerOffice of the Australian Information Commissioner, 2019
- Optus privacy policyOptus, updated 15 July 2026
- RBA bans card surcharges, lowers interchange feesAustralian Frequent Flyer
- RBA card surcharge reformsCommonwealth Bank