BPay to launch first service on the New Payments Platform
(15 May 2017 – Australia) The first service allowing Australian bank customers to make immediate via the Australian New Payments Platform will be through a BPay-built platform called Osko, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.
Owned by BPay, Osko will initially allow customers to make and receive instant payments, through a new bank identification number dubbed “PayID”.
In the near future, the platform will extend to businesses, who will be able to use it to request payments, with invoices and statements attached.
BPay Group chief executive John Banfield told the publication he hoped the word Osko enters the vernacular, in the same way Google and Uber have.
"I would love, at the end of this, where we're simply making statements as friends, to say, I'll Osko it to you, or I'll Osko someone. That's really what we want to get to," Banfield said.
The platform will be available from 70 financial institutions from the day it goes live, including all of the major banks.
BPay was successful in the bidding process to determine which provider would be allowed to deliver the first "overlay service" on the NPP infrastructure.
Banfield told SMH: "We felt that we had to really fight hard to win this business to create an innovative way of thinking about payments for the future for all Australians, that BPay created 20 years ago, to take that forward now for the next 20 years,.”
NPP Australia chief executive Adrian Lovney said that although Osko will be the first "overlay service" to be provided on the NPP, the company was in discussions with other finance an technology businesses that may utilise the system.
According to East & Partners’ Australian Merchant Payments Report, the NPP has a tough task of informing and educating Australian businesses about its key features.
According to the report, released earlier this year, awareness among Australia’s business community is low. More than 75 percent of businesses said they were unaware of the infrastructure and its benefits, driven largely by Micro businesses and Small to Medium Enterprises. Further, of those businesses that were aware of the NPP, an overwhelming majority (72 percent) of merchants cited the initiative’s promise to delivery same day transaction as the major benefit.
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