Digital & Online
+4
Sep 23, 2025
For many years the Reserve Bank has set an expectation on financial institutions to improve the reliability of payment services. So, how is it that banks and other providers are able to sell or rent payment devices that don’t work or appear to break down easily?
Merchant Service Fees
Key strategies to reduce the cost of card fees charged to small businesses are not being used by the Reserve Bank of Australia, despite decades of market failure under the “reluctant regulator” and its proposed ban on surcharging.
Fintech
+2
+3
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Cash
+5
Financial regulators are close to recommending a way forward for cash distribution in Australia, reiterating that hard currency remains an essential part of the economy and cash in circulation is at record highs. In the meantime, they have flagged yet another consultation - this time on Amex, BNPL and mobile wallets.
Former Coles tech boss John Cox has taken the reins at Sydney-based payments outfit, Linkly.
A new report details the hidden cost of payment complexity for Australian businesses in a digital world, with cash flow ranked the number one menace.
Banks
+1
Bank Australia has launched a range of translucent credit and debit cards made from recycled plastic.
Long the masters of recategorising and changing fee structures to stay a step ahead of regulators, the Ticketmaster/Ticketek duopoly will be ready for any challenge thrown by regulators, their critics believe.
Investment platform Spaceship has selected Zepto to power PayTo payments for its customers.
Paypal has revealed the true impact of the ‘Bestie Tax’ – the silent cost of sparing friends’ feelings at the expense of your own wallet.
Sydney payments fintech Ezypay has been acquired by US tech company, Xplor Technologies, for an undisclosed sum.
In an effort to ramp up usage of its Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) offering, PayPal Australia is launching its biggest ever Australian consumer ad blitz, fronted by US comic and producer, Will Ferrell.
Clover has launched a new update, enabling Apple's Tap to Pay on mobile phones through its app in Australia.
Sep 16, 2025
Apple Pay has taken out paid advertising at Woolies checkouts to further push up its market share, amid serious concerns from banks that hidden fees are adding significant cost to Australia’s payments system.
Australian EcoTech company Sphere has launched a new app that helps Shopify retailers and their customers reduce the impact of parcel deliveries when making a payment at the checkout.
Vladimir Putin’s call for a new payments system free of Western control comes as sanctions on Russia and China’s ambitions converge with a surge of new global domestic and regional networks.
A2A
A closed shop of industry and government representatives has held the first in a series of account-to-account (A2A) payment roundtables, but end users are expected to get their turn soon.
The opacity of merchant fee pricing across the globe is spawning a wave of litigation and burgeoning demand for payments experts. One of the world’s largest merchant advisory groups, BB Merchant Services, says it is expanding its presence in the Australian market.
Mastercard has launched a new virtual card option for Australia corporates, with Westpac becoming the first to activate the solution for clients using Oracle Fusion Cloud Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP).
+6
If the Reserve Bank wants consensus on its proposal for merchant fees and surcharging, it’s a lost cause. The best the central bank can hope for is a decision in the public interest, leveraging strong sentiment on issues such as scheme fees, least-cost routing and the burden on small business.
LCR
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.
Regulation
Reserve Bank Governor Michele Bullock has talked up the benefits of the New Payments Platform in Australia, while its key customer – the Federal Government - continues to hold back on moving substantial volume to the platform.
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.
ANZ has dumped three fintech bets in a matter of days, a sharp shift away from underperforming payments-led experimentation.
After years of deliberation and delay, federal parliament has finally passed changes to the Payments System Regulation Act. While the reforms give the Treasurer new special powers to designate payments systems in the ‘national interest’ they are unlikely to advance the RBA’s mandate to support competition. Currently only eftpos, NPP, Visa and MasterCard are designated payment systems.
Small business groups want the Reserve Bank to shed light on why the average fee to process an eftpos transaction is rising as wholesale costs decline and more banks make least cost routing available to merchants. They say it’s pointing to something profoundly dysfunctional in the Australian payments system.
Tyro is warning customers to only make “modest price adjustments” in the wake of the proposed RBA surcharging bans next year, while continuing to promote hefty 1.4% bundled plans with surcharging to new small business clients.
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.
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.
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+).
