Reserve Bank of Australia and partners release vision for Australia’s account to account payments system

The Reserve Bank of Australia said the Account-to-Account Payments Roundtable has released a long-term vision for Australia’s account-to-account payments system following public consultation and wider stakeholder engagement. The vision sets the direction for a payments system that serves consumers, businesses and government agencies and is intended to support resilience, competition, innovation and productivity as payment technology, fraud and cyber risks, and user expectations evolve. The Roundtable, which brings together Australian Payments Network Limited, Australian Payments Plus, the Reserve Bank of Australia and the Commonwealth Treasury, framed the vision around five outcomes for end-users: payments should be safe, reliable, affordable, easy to use and inclusive. To deliver that, the system should be secure and protected, highly available and resilient, feature and capability rich, accessible for providers, commercially viable and appropriately standardised, supported by governance arrangements that are clear, collaborative and adaptable. Consultation feedback showed broad support across banks, payment service providers, fintechs, technology companies, merchants, industry bodies and government agencies for a shared national vision, stronger A2A capability and payments infrastructure modernisation, while also highlighting demand for clarity on prioritisation, sequencing and governance. The next phase is the development of an A2A payments roadmap, which will set out high-level deliverables, implementation timelines, and governance and coordination arrangements for achieving the vision. Structured mechanisms have been established to gather further input from banks, payment service providers, end-users and other stakeholders during that process.