Bank outages put cash in the spotlight

By George Lekakis, Senior Banking and Financial Services Correspondent 

As the average duration of system outages continues to blow out, Australian banks are facing a backlash from retail and business customers over the perceived instability of their digital banking platforms and payments channels.

The gravity of the outage nuisance is also drawing scrutiny from the Reserve Bank, which turned the spotlight on technology risks at Australian banks in its Financial Stability Review published in September.

RBA Governor says options on surcharging expected mid-2025

By Staff Reporter

The Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) Michele Bullock today said card surcharging is a “complicated topic” and the Bank intended to publish its recommendations about whether or not to ban the practice by mid-2025 after “proper consultation”.

Bullock told Senate Estimates that the issue was complicated and the Bank needed to do significant consultation before making a decision.

Debit costs remain static despite interchange caps and massive volume increase

By Peter Drennan

Average debit transaction fees have remained static over the past 10 years, despite regulatory intervention to reduce costs in the form of interchange caps, and a massive increase in volume.

In the Reserve Bank of Australia’s issues paper on merchant card payment costs and surcharging, the RBA made particular note that:

“There may be room for further reductions in card payment costs, particularly as the fixed costs of providing card payment services are being spread over a higher volume and value of transactions than ever before.”

ACCC weighs in surcharging ... wait, what?

By Warwick Ponder

After only using its current powers to stop excessive card surcharging a handful of times since the rules were introduced in 2016, ACCC Chair, Gina Cass-Gottlieb, has described the issue as “complex” in the context of the Australian payments system.

Under the current rules, the maximum pecuniary penalty for breaches of the prohibition against excessive payment surcharges is $2,025,423 for corporations, and $405,335 for individuals.

A brief history of heavy lifting in Aussie Payments

By Brad Kelly

Some of the challenges we face in payments today pale into insignificance when we look at the history of our industry in Australia.

For example, the 14th of February 1966 was a significant day in Australian payments. 

RBA explores wholesale CBDC, while a retail option is put on ice for now, report

By Staff Reporter

No clear public interest case to issue a retail central bank digital currency (CBDC) has yet to emerge in Australia, while a wholesale offering is more promising, according to a new report from The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) and Treasury.

The RBA will launch the public phase of Project Acacia, which will explore opportunities to uplift the efficiency, transparency and resilience of wholesale markets through tokenisation and new settlement infrastructure.

Zepto partners with Stake on recurring investment deposits using PayTo

By Staff Reporter

Zepto has announced a partnership with online investment platform Stake to help facilitate its Recurring Investment product via PayTo over the New Payments Platform (NPP).

They say it is one of the first applications of PayTo to enable recurring deposits through a brokerage platform. 

Monthly Payments Data Report

By Peter Drennan

The RBA released it's Retail Payments data as at September 2024 on the 7th of November, including key quarterly stats on Merchant Fees. Here are the latest results.

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