(17 May 2022 – Australia) The Reserve Bank of Australia is strongly advising banks to not miss upcoming deadlines on new payments systems that will make it cheaper, simpler and faster for customers to process domestic and cross border payments.
Some major banks indicated they would fall short of a combined commitment to launch the new “PayTo” system for direct debits by July 2022. The new systems serve as an upgrade to the New Payments Platform (NPP), a major modernisation of Australia's real time payments system which the RBA has been heading up since 2012. The RBA is also pushing banks to integrate a new international payments system which will enable the Australian dollar component of inbound cross-border payments to be processed by the NPP.
“The Reserve Bank expects the industry to remain committed to delivering the international payments business service in 2023. The Governor Philip Lowe has written to the CEOs of the relevant banks to seek assurance that they will be ready to launch PayTo by no later than April 2023” stated RBA Head of Payments Policy, Ellis Connolly.
“International payments using the existing system were too expensive, slow and opaque. Using the NPP would increase the speed and lower the cost of transactions” Connolly added.