payment method – APCA Blog

Payments Industry Policy and Government Round-up

Merric Foley — Thu, 22 Jun 2017 05:14:51 +0000

In recent months, the Commonwealth Government has announced a number of initiatives that touch on the world of payments. We are pleased to be working in a collaborative capacity with the government on the topics outlined below. If you would…

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…

Apple Pay in Australia

Chris Hamilton — Mon, 10 Aug 2015 04:21:41 +0000

Here at APCA, one of our jobs is to ensure that the community is well informed about payments systems and their future evolution. We were therefore very interested in recent industry media commentary on the evolution of new payment technologies and, in particular, the progress of Apple Pay in Australia.

Australian payment institutions have been criticised by some in the local media for not getting together to make Apple Pay happen. I am not privy to any commercial discussions (of course), but that is a little surprising. There just might be legitimate pro-competitive reasons for that not happening – they are competitors and given Apple’s market weight, they will doubtless have a significant effect on competitive dynamics. This bears careful thought.

RBA data suggests 40% of credit card values in Australia are now card-not-present

Brad Pragnell — Fri, 06 Mar 2015 04:07:58 +0000

Change is pretty well the only constant when it comes to consumer payments. In Australia, we have seen a rapid uptake in contactless card use as well as increased use of online payments. Conversely, we have seen a rapid decline in personal cheque use as well as an ever-diminishing use of cash.

Monitoring changing payment usage can be notoriously difficult. The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) and APCA collect and publish statistics from industry participants on cheques, cards and electronic payments as well the number of ATMs and POS devices. However, other types of usage such as cash use and the split between card-present (point-of-sale) and card-not-present (internet, telephone and mail) transactions are more difficult to track. Consumers and merchants don’t regularly record or report their own payments activity – meaning we only get a partial picture of how payments use is evolving.

Payment costs in Australia – early observations from new RBA research

Brad Pragnell — Mon, 05 Jan 2015 23:23:41 +0000

With complex processes and multiple parties, determining the costs of payments can be difficult. In recent years, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has taken up the challenge and released a research report on the cost of payments in Australia. This represents a long-awaited follow up to research last done in 2006.

The most recent RBA report dated December 2014 draws upon data collected in 2013 from financial institutions, businesses and consumers and seeks to quantify the overall cost of payments and the cost of various payment methods. This includes both “resource costs” (the costs to the whole economy) and “private costs” (the costs borne by consumers, merchants and financial institutions respectively).

Payments World USA

Chris Hamilton — Tue, 15 Apr 2014 23:31:38 +0000

In April, I took a quick trip to Disney World...well, kind of. The annual conference of NACHA, APCA's equivalent body in the USA, was held at Disney World's home: Orlando, Florida. Around 2,200 bankers turned up to hear three days of presentations on the state of US payments - and possibly catch a few rides. I hope they had some fun amongst the work, because these are stressful times for US payment providers. Having weathered the GFC with tightened budgets, US bankers are acutely conscious of new payments system developments in other countries and pressure from the US Federal Reserve to follow suit or be left behind; but they are a long way from agreeing amongst themselves what is to be done, and who will pay. My small contribution was to outline the policy logic behind Australia's New Payments Platform (NPP) proposal as a comparative example. There was much interest.

A health plan for the payment system

Chris Hamilton — Wed, 26 Jun 2013 06:15:48 +0000

Recent data shows Australian non-cash activity overtaking cash transactions for the first time. These days almost every economic act other than a small consumer purchase requires an electronic transfer of value through the payment system by card, direct credit, direct debit, BPAY or some other method. This means that the payment system has become to the economy what your arteries and veins are to you – critical for economic health. One might think, then, that keeping the payment system “fit” (that is, secure, efficient and competitive) would be the subject of a well-developed “health plan”. Curiously, in many countries this has not been the case.

Australia and the electronic payments leagues table

Brad Pragnell — Wed, 26 Jun 2013 03:11:56 +0000

Today electronic payments are the norm in Australia. In the direct entry system, there are about 7 million items per day equal to about $45 billion. Employers and governments use direct entry to pay wages and benefits, while individuals use direct entry to pay for goods and services through direct debits and internet banking.

These direct entry payments, which include direct credit and direct debit, account for 96 per cent of non-cash value (excluding high value payments) and about one-third of the number of non-cash payments.

From these figures, one would suspect that Australians are reasonably prolific users of electronic payments, which stands in contrast to some commentary that Australia is somehow “lagging behind” other countries in this respect.

A tale of two countries

Chris Hamilton — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 06:26:29 +0000

In Sydney in early June, we launched our consultation on the future of cheques. Our proposition is simple: based on long-term trends, cheques are steadily disappearing from the Australian community. That means problems down the track for those who rely on them, as they increasingly find their payment counterparties don't want to use or accept a cheque, even if they do. This consultation is not about cheque clearing at all: it's about making sure people have what they need.

In the same week, on the other side of the world, the House of Lords in London began an acrimonious debate on the same issue: the future of cheques in the UK. The UK Payments Council has had closure of the paper clearing system on the agenda for several years, but they have not been able to win community support for the need to change.