Australia’s First Stablecoin Licences have Opened the Door. Will Customers Walk Through?

This isn’t theoretical.

Picture this: you plan a holiday to a new destination using ChatGPT. The model recommends accommodation options based on your preferences and budget, then plans a schedule of activities. Once you approve the plans, including a full budget breakdown and funding suggestions (such as a new credit card with bonus points), an agent undertakes all bookings and payments on your behalf, and all from within the ChatGPT interface. With stablecoins, your GPT agent executes instant cross-border payments with transparent foreign currency exchanges and lower fees. Bookings are confirmed faster and refunds arrive immediately. By leveraging stablecoins’ open networks, you limit your agent’s access to vulnerable areas such as your bank account or credit cards, mitigating agentic risks.

Or this: you visit an online mass retailer (like Amazon) for a routine purchase. The retailer’s purchasing agent searches the web beyond their own marketplace for the best deal. You transact from your loyalty account in the retailer’s native stablecoin, a cash equivalent within a vast retail network providing built-in discounts and offers. The retailer holds the customer relationship and knows your buying patterns. They have an instant-settlement payment method that avoids the intermediaries and associated fees of traditional payment rails, providing savings they can pass on to customers.

These aren’t future concepts—the technologies to make these happen are possible now. The future of payments is already reshaping Australia’s financial services sector. Fundamental reconfiguration is underway.

New technologies and new players are rapidly reshaping the payments landscape. Stablecoins have entered mainstream payments globally. Agentic (AI-driven) payments are rising. This convergence creates an explosion of opportunity in the financial services sector, with leaders increasingly voicing expectations of a digital revolution in payments. Bill Winters, CEO of UK bank Standard Chartered, encapsulates this sentiment: “Our belief is that pretty much all transactions will settle on blockchains eventually, and that all money will be digital. Think about what that means: a complete rewiring of the financial system.¹

Despite so much change, one thing remains the same: the customer is always right.

Our research shows the financial services sector is reorganising at pace around evolving customer needs. Any change to payments will succeed only if it delivers clear, tangible benefits for users (payers and payees). This includes building trust and proactively reducing the risk of exploitation by bad actors. Financial institutions have a vital role in providing payment solutions to meet customer demand for more efficient, safe and innovative financial products.

Banks have the most to gain—and to lose

Payments are the most frequent touchpoint for banks and their customers, and where tolerance for failure is zero. Every failed or delayed transaction erodes trust. If customers move to non-bank payment alternatives, banks don’t just lose transaction revenue; they lose a key reason customers keep coming back.

For the past 20 years, banks have encouraged customers into digital channels, reducing branches and limiting human interaction in call centres. As human connections have declined, customers’ primary experience with their bank is making and receiving payments—a multiple-times-a-day opportunity to meet expectations (successful transaction) or disappoint a customer (failed transaction). Payment innovation has rarely exceeded customers’ baseline expectations for convenience and availability. Despite a simpler addressing method in PayID for the New Payments Platform (NPP), adoption hasn’t exploded, as evidenced by the mandated ‘confirmation of payee’ capability now enabled on the legacy BSB and account number addressing method. The biggest innovation from a customer perspective is the phone-native wallet, brought by technology giants who charge card issuers a high toll, a toll banks pay because customers demanded the experience.