An announcement to all Down Under Visa clients:

As you probably know, when we pay the Government Visa Application Charge to the Department of Immigration and Border Protection (DIBP, formerly DIAC), we pay them by credit card.

They have two payment options only:

• Credit card
• Bank cheque

Starting 22 March 2014 they will be charging a surcharge for all credit card payments.

9/04/2014  NB. As of yet they have not introduced the surcharge. We will let you know.

We still don’t know what percentage it will be, because they haven’t told us yet. But it will happen.

Your options for payments made after this date will be:

1. Pay us the extra surcharge, and we will pay it to them, or;
2. Get a bank cheque, and queue up at a DIPB office to pay it, then email us the receipt

Our apologies to those whom this will affect, but you will understand that there’s not a thing we can do about this. It’s out of our hands.

To those of you who have applications ready, suggest that you pay the balance ASAP so that we can lodge before this date. And understand that we can’t do anything at the last minute.