The potential applicability of surfactant solutions as carrier streams in flow injection analysis is examined. The reaction rates determined for the base catalyzed hydrolysis of acetylsalicylic acid in aqueous, micellar and microemulsion solutions show a rate enhancement of 40% for the static microemulsion system when compared to the aqueous solution. However, when the identical microemulsion solution is employed as a carrier stream in flow injection analysis with ultraviolet detection, this enhancement in rate is not observed. To our knowledge, all previous work employing microemulsions in FIA has been concerned only with detection enhancement, here we present direct comparisons between aqueous and microemulsion carriers concerning rates of reaction, peak dispersion and analytical figures of merit. The loss in relative sensitivity can be traced to the increased dispersion in the microemulsion system (D = 14.36) when compared to the aqueous carrier (D = 12.52). Additionally, an increased skewness was observed in the peaks obtained with a microemulsion carrier, yielding further information about the physical dispersion process occuring in the sample plug.