LCR
+1
Sep 9, 2025
eftpos owner AP+ is chasing Mastercard’s aggressive Click to Pay rollout in the land grab to embed tokens and least-cost routing for online card payments.
Fintech
ANZ has dumped three fintech bets in a matter of days, a sharp shift away from underperforming payments-led experimentation.
+2
Merchant Service Fees
+3
Regulation
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Cash
July's RBA payment data, released on Monday, reveals diverging trends: credit cards struggle in-store but dominate bill payments, while strong debit card growth suggests returning consumer confidence in discretionary spending.
Sep 2, 2025
Qantas believes that while the RBA's aims are admirable, it will not get the results it wants - with the proposed ban on surcharging more likely to see an inflationary effect.
Digital & Online
The ASX faces “further regulatory steps” to improve its governance and risk culture, following batch payments failure incident in December 2024.
Australian Payments Plus (AP+) digital ID solution, ConnectID, has achieved a top ranking in the Australian Government’s Age Assurance Technology Trial report, which confirms that age assurance can be delivered in Australia in a way that is private, efficient and effective.
Banks and other acquirers enjoyed lower wholesale costs for processing eftpos transactions last year, but the average service fees paid by merchants still soared by 34 per cent. The blowout in merchant costs comes as the RBA released fresh data that least cost routing had been “enabled” for 80 per cent of Australian merchants at the end of June.
Banks
The country’s big four banks face a serious challenge from JP Morgan in the institutional payments market.
Macquarie Bank has joined BioCatch Trust Australia, adding an additional layer of security protection against fraud and scams for its customers.
Qantas remains upbeat that its Loyalty division can continue grow at 10-12% each year despite dark warnings from card schemes about the interchange caps that underpin the program.
The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has endorsed an ongoing research program examining interoperability, third-party and concentration risks, resilience arrangements for high-value payments and the vulnerability of the payments system to utilities outages.
Mobile least-cost routing (LCR) is now available to 50 per cent of cardholders, according Australian Payments Plus (AP+).
Aug 26, 2025
Adyen has achieved a breakthrough in lowering the payments costs borne by merchants in Australia and the US, using an AI-driven dynamic routing platform. The service has delivered cost savings running into the millions for big online merchants such as Adobe and Microsoft.
A2A
In a big win for Australian Payments Plus (AP+), the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) will require super funds to receive NPP payments from 1 July 2026, ahead of next year’s proposed payday super reforms.
AusPayNet has promised to escalate soaring card not present fraud offshore to its peak body card forum to discuss a possible fix. In meantime, local businesses and their customers are paying the price.
Cuscal boss Craig Kennedy says he has received positive feedback from Indue customers about his company’s proposed $75 million buyout of its Brisbane-based rival.
Australia’s two biggest issuers are bulk‐enrolling millions of Mastercard customers into tokenised, one‐click online checkout. Banks say it’s about fraud; critics say it sidelines eftpos and Least‐Cost Routing
Sydney cross-border payments outfit Send Payments has appointment former Australian Payments Plus, eftpos and Mastercard executive Matt Barr as its new CEO, just after successfully raising $5 million.
More than half of NPP banks had outages in the June quarter, including three of the Big Four banks.
WPay boss Paul Monnington will take the reigns at Mastercard in Australia and New Zealand in January 2026, after Richard Wormald accepted a promotion to head up the company’s Asia Pacific region in Singapore.
Scams Awareness Week’s 2025 theme focuses on urging consumers to Stop. Check. Protect. when keeping yourself safe from scams.
Tyro’s full year result shows that one of the Sydney acquirer’s key business transaction metrics has flatlined in the 12 months to June, while it searches for new business in verticals including pet health, automotive and aged care.
Sydney payments outfit Zip has announced plans to list on Nasdaq, after seeing significant growth in its US operations and a softening market at home.
Scams & Fraud
Aug 19, 2025
Despite claims by the card schemes that watertight security underpins their fees, gaping loopholes are being exposed by criminals creating a fraud problem worth almost $1billion a year.
Tyro investors are jittery after it revealed it had rejected several offers to sell its business but still hasn’t landed a buyer.
With the days of fee cross-subsidisation for bank rewards card programs coming to an end, CommBank is slashing its partners and amping up rhetoric in opposition to the Reserve Bank’s proposed interchange fee reductions.
As one of Klarna’s largest shareholders, Commonwealth Bank is set to book a fat gain when the buy now pay later company floats its operations on the New York Stock Exchange.
The Reserve Bank’s hands off attitude to scheme fees will be tested by commentary from Australia’s biggest bank when it unveiled its financial results last week.
A joint consultation on the future vision for A2A payments in Australia by AP+ and AusPayNet has wrapped up, with 60 submissions received - none of which will be published in full.
While debate rages on about surcharging and the significant impact on retailers in Australia, a subtle but significant trend has emerged in the card fees data.
The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) yesterday moved to head off criticism of the data it used in its Review of Merchant Card Payment Costs and Surcharging consultation paper.
Red Energy has seen a reduction in card fees and call centre handling times since its collaboration with Zepto last year, according to a new case study.
Venture capital support for retail payments fintechs continues to wither. But it’s a different story for enterprise-focused fintechs and retail players active in the wealth management and lending sectors.
Aug 12, 2025
The ACCC prefers to do nothing when state and federal government agencies such as Transport for NSW enter deals that stifle competition in the payments industry.
atmwest is expanding its services into Australia’s larger cities and overseas - to the island nation of Mauritius.
