innovation – APCA Blog

ISO/TC 307 Blockchain and electronic distributed ledger technologies

Payments Direction — Wed, 19 Apr 2017 05:55:03 +0000

During the first week of April 2017, our Emerging Technology Lead, Nick Cliff, took part in the first meeting of the international technical committee on standards. The ISO/TC 307 Blockchain and electronic distributed ledger technologies met at the International Convention…

Connections and Collaboration: What Do They Mean For The Future?

Alice Markie — Wed, 10 Aug 2016 01:12:45 +0000

Payments is a network business, which means that collaboration between a range of stakeholders is vital. With increased consumer expectation, new business models, and continuous innovations in payments technology – how the industry connects and collaborates shapes the future of…

More data, more value

Damien Butler — Fri, 29 Jul 2016 01:00:41 +0000

If you could analyse all my payments data you’d be pretty close to feeling like you know me without us ever having met. You’d know how I get to work, the supermarket I shop at, my coffee habits, subscriptions, right…

Are contactless bank cards the future of public transport ticketing?

Alice Markie — Tue, 31 May 2016 23:04:14 +0000

Sydney commuters could be replacing their Opal cards with bank cards – and even their mobile phones – as early as next year, if the trial goes well. This would put Sydney in-line with the likes of London where contactless…

Shared Ledger Technology and the snapshot problem

Chris Hamilton — Wed, 20 Apr 2016 23:25:07 +0000

I’ve talked before about how user trust in service providers is still necessary for Shared Ledger Technology (SLT), but I think the question about trust in central third parties is harder to analyse. By “central third party” I mean anyone…

Why Shared Ledger Technology won’t free us from human fallibility

Chris Hamilton — Tue, 12 Apr 2016 23:46:57 +0000

In my previous post, I discussed Bitcoin’s desire to remove trust from the payments process. I now want to look at the nature of financial trust: What does it mean to say we “trust” a third party? Is trust of…

We need to talk about Bitcoin’s trust issues

Chris Hamilton — Wed, 06 Apr 2016 22:47:41 +0000

I recently tackled Satoshi Nakamoto’s original Bitcoin text, which has mythical status amongst devotees of shared ledger technology. It is a paragon of clarity on what Bitcoin is really all about. According to its spiritual father, the purpose of Bitcoin…

Perspectives on the Australian Payments Plan

Alice Markie — Wed, 03 Feb 2016 01:26:11 +0000

Last month’s release of the Australian Payments Plan (APP) signals big changes for the Australian economy – but what does it actually mean? Watch: Mark Birrell, Chair of the Australian Payments Council, explains what the Australian Payments Plan is and…

Cloudsurfing and payments

Chris Hamilton — Wed, 11 Nov 2015 05:50:38 +0000

Many in our industry are watching in fascination as the United States inches towards a real-time payments solution. There are three recent developments: the Fed’s Faster payments task force has defined effectiveness criteria for a new payments system, NACHA has received the Fed’s approval for its same day ACH rule, and most interestingly, The Clearing House – the high value clearing network for the larger banks – has announced a letter of intent with Vocalink to develop a new real-time system.

Judging by the Chicago Payments Symposium hosted by the Chicago Fed last month, there is still nothing like consensus on the “right” outcome, and the US is still some years from new mainstream payments services that are “cloud ready”.

Australia providing ideas to help bring digital payments to the poor

Brad Pragnell — Tue, 06 Oct 2015 23:23:01 +0000

Does Australia’s New Payments Platform hold some lessons for developing countries looking to design their own digital payments system? The Level One Project Guide, released earlier this year by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, would suggest so.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is one of the world’s most influential NGOs. It supports numerous initiatives, primarily aimed at health and economic development in developing countries. An area of interest for the Foundation has been financial inclusion, with a particular focus on how new digital technologies, such as mobile phones, can be used to provide low cost and accessible payment services to the poor.