Just three months after the RBA completed its review of card payments and surcharging, a parliamentary inquiry has called for a rematch, demanding an ACCC investigation.

The payments industry may be waiting another two years to understand what new access and fraud rules might be applied to the New Payments Platform (NPP), while the Reserve Bank appears to have de-emphasised real time network outages and pricing issues in a paper published last week.

More Australians are pulling out cash by tapping a phone, watch or card at the ATM and Mastercard is cashing in with a big scheme fee increase which will likely be passed on to consumers.

The ACCC will let ANZ, CBA, NAB and Westpac start planning a joint cash company with an interim authorisation. Australia's dominant cash carrier Armaguard says the plan ends in an unregulated monopoly, the Reserve Bank wants conditions, and the country's largest ATM operator NCR Atleos wants the price locked down before anyone signs.

A parliamentary inquiry has called for sweeping reforms to Australia's account-to-account payments system, urging government and industry to make the New Payments Platform easier for smaller payment providers to access while strengthening security, consumer protections and long-term competition against the global card schemes.

After years of campaigning, Commonwealth Bank’s Matt Comyn may finally be closer to wrapping a regulatory noose around Apple Pay and getting a CBA mobile payments app on iPhones.

Over the next two years, the Reserve Bank of Australia will scrutinise potential competition and efficiency issues associated with American Express, while the company takes a risky bet on merchants continuing to honour its cards without the ability to surcharge its hefty fees.

Today a new era of superannuation payments has arrived but a huge number of businesses and wage earners don’t have a clue what’s changed.

Across the Tasman, CBA, ANZ, NAB and Westpac are replicating their home-grown struggle with cash – who pays for legal tender to be distributed across New Zealand through a single cash-in-transit operator.

The Government will open Australia's Digital ID system to private sector participation from December, as a new pilot demonstrates how Digital ID and Consumer Data Right (CDR) could transform rental applications by eliminating the need for passports, driver's licences and payslips.

Metcash's first profit lift in the category and a wave of state raids suggest enforcement is starting to land, yet retailers, economists and Labor premiers warn the legislation on foot in Canberra does nothing about the price gap criminals rely on.

As we move through the next phases of the RBA’s changes, we will learn exactly how the schemes and issuers intend to keep interchange as high as possible and merchants paying for cardholder privileges. Could Revolut’s high-cost, single-network “Ultra” card be part of that answer?

On The Interchange Bench this week, Cuscal’s Head of Legal Manell Saad is elevated to Company Secretary, while the company welcomes a new Board member, Dr Leila Fourie. Meanwhile, ING local payments IT head Nikesh Lalchandani jumps to the Boston Consulting Group, Macquarie’s tech boss Richard Heeley is appointed CIO at Westpac, Binance packs its bags in Europe, Zii arrives in Japan and rolls out Molly Tea in Australia, and Zip’s Larry Diamond splashes cash at Dover Heights.

The Reserve Bank is questioning whether integrated platforms are reducing competition in payments just as Australian fintech Zeller launches a new AI-powered product in a market dominated by global platforms like Square, Stripe, Shift4, Shopify and Lightspeed.

Payments have moved from the back office to the front line of business competition, with new Worldline research showing payment capability is now a major driver of merchant loyalty, customer experience and checkout behaviour.

Melbourne digital receipt fintech 1receipt has partnered with Fiserv to integrate its paperless receipt technology with Clover, giving retailers access to high-speed digital receipts without requiring shoppers to provide personal information at checkout.