Media Release Launch of the New Payments Platform

Today, the Reserve Bank of Australia and its Payments System Board (PSB) welcome the public launch of the New Payments Platform (NPP). The NPP is an important addition to Australia's payments infrastructure and it will provide a platform for innovation and competition in the provision of payment services.

The Reserve Bank and the PSB thank the NPP Australia Board, NPP financial institutions and their thousands of staff who have contributed to the development of the platform over a number of years. It has been a highly collaborative industry program, which has involved considerable planning, effort and investment.

Philip Lowe, Governor and Chair of the PSB, said, ‘The public launch of the NPP represents the delivery of a major piece of national infrastructure. I would like to thank everyone who has been involved in the NPP project and I look forward to the payment innovations it will make possible and the benefits this will generate for all Australians.’

The launch of the NPP means that the industry is delivering on the key strategic objectives that were established by the PSB in June 2012 as part of its Strategic Review of Innovation in the Payments System. In particular, the NPP and the initial overlay service, Osko, will allow financial institutions to provide improved services to Australian businesses and consumers, including to:

• make real-time payments, with close to immediate funds availability to the recipient
• make and receive payments on a 24/7 basis
• have the capacity to send more complete remittance information with payments
• address payments in a relatively simple way.

Around 60 banks, credit unions and building societies will begin rolling out services to their customers from today, with the number of financial institutions and accounts linked to the NPP progressively increasing over the coming months.

The Reserve Bank developed new infrastructure, the RITS Fast Settlement Service, to enable the settlement of NPP transactions between financial institutions in real time on a 24/7 basis across exchange settlement accounts at the Reserve Bank. The Reserve Bank is also an NPP participant with newly developed services utilising the NPP for its government customers.