CEO’s corner

Parliament House x2, and a spotlight on payments leadership

Since the last CEO’s corner, I’ve had the pleasure of visiting Parliament House twice.

The first visit was to appear before the House Standing Committee on Economics’ Inquiry into Schemes, Digital Wallets and Innovation in the Payments Sector.  

Parliamentary inquiries – and the Committee rooms in which they’re held – can be intimidating. The members of the Committee are focused on areas such as consumer harm, competition, and costs, so each question is a potential landmine, and you can never anticipate every question. And despite their expertise – for example, Committee Chair, the Hon Ed Husic MP’s impressive knowledge of the digital economy – they are not payments experts, so the job of people like me, appearing before them, is to explain the complexity of the payments system succinctly.

I found myself translating constantly: turning subject matter expertise into higher-level narrative, explaining that the payments (eco)system only works through the network effect, that ‘costs’ fund investment, that perceived duplication is sometimes resilience.  

As I was asked each deceptively simple question – Why are costs structured this way? Who has market power? Are consumers being treated fairly? – I had a mental map of our 160+ Members: what are areas of divergence or areas of commonality in their views?  

It strikes me that, in fact, there is more commonality than divergence in our member views. And that commonality includes other stakeholders, like regulators, businesses, corporates, and the politicians on the Committee.

They seek accountability, fairness, competition and innovation. There are echoes there to our submission to the Inquiry, which argued for a framework based on ‘similar activity, similar risk, same rules’, a principle that tries to reconcile exactly those elements.

In my view, it’s not about a trade-off between regulation and innovation; it’s about regulation that supports innovation. And given the speed of innovation, which will outpace legislation and regulation, AusPayNet is part of the solution, in industry self-regulation and standards, and in being the industry coordination body.

My final reflection is that the translation that I talked about earlier is vital. With 160+ Members, it is impossible for me, or AusPayNet, to advocate for particular interests, but the advice that we’re able to give to politicians is critical in creating a shared understanding on the big questions in payments.

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That brings me to my second visit to Parliament House last month, which was to meet with the Treasurer, the Hon Dr Jim Chalmers MP, and the Assistant Treasurer, the Hon Dr Daniel Mulino MP. We talked about a variety of topics: A2A payments, cash, cheques, scams, resilience, the RBA Review of Merchant Card Payment Costs and Surcharging, the Strategic Plan for Payments, and the forthcoming PSP licensing regime.

It is excellent for AusPayNet to have such direct access to the Treasurer and Assistant Treasurer. What struck me is their knowledge and coverage across payments and all those specific topics. The shared understanding I mentioned earlier exists and will lead to the betterment of Australia, its economy and its payments ecosystem.

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Before I sign off, I would like to share two other highlights from the last couple of months: 

• On 23 April, our Issuers and Acquirers Forum approved sunrise dates starting in 2027 for the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) and sunset dates for the Triple Data Encryption Standard (TDES) (including a general sunset of TDES in 2030). This is a landmark moment. Alan Machet, Country Head of Visa, said at the House Standing Committee on Economics’ Inquiry – coming full circle – “Australia is a world leader, … through AusPayNet, in running a project to get us all up to a new encryption standard that's going to protect us for when quantum computing becomes mainstream”. We are immensely proud of that leadership.
   
• On 30 April, the A2A Payments Roundtable – which AusPayNet facilitates, and which includes AP+, the RBA and Commonwealth Treasury – opened its public consultation on the draft Vision for A2A payments in Australia. I’m proud that we’ve got this far, and the input we get on the Vision will ensure that A2A payments continue to meet the evolving needs of their users. But now the real work starts: the development of an Industry Roadmap to meet the Vision’s desired end-state for A2A payments. This will require prioritisation and sequencing of industry deliverables, which we will achieve by working directly with system participants and stakeholders, including end-users. I’m immensely excited to start this work.

Transition program updates

For the latest updates on our Transition Programs, visit the project pages using the links below:

• AES Migration Program
• BECS Transition Program
• Cheques Transition Program

Payments reforms

RBA Review of Merchant Card Payment Costs and Surcharging: Conclusions Paper

AusPayNet welcomed the release of the Conclusions Paper for the RBA's Review of Merchant Card Payment Costs and Surcharging on 31 March. This followed two rounds of industry consultation over the preceding 18 months, as discussed in our February 2025 and November 2025 newsletters.

The Conclusions Paper set out a package of significant regulatory reforms for the card payments system. These reforms included:

• The removal of the surcharging framework for all debit, prepaid and credit cards on the designated eftpos, Mastercard and Visa card networks.
   
• Reductions in the interchange fee caps for transactions on domestic debit and prepaid cards (from 10 cents to 8 cents or 0.16 per cent, with a benchmark of 8 cents) and consumer credit cards (from 0.8 per cent to 0.3 per cent, with no benchmark), while retaining the domestic commercial credit card cap at 0.8 per cent. 
   
• The introduction of an interchange fee cap of 1.0 per cent for all foreign-issued card transactions acquired in Australia.
   
• Enhancements to payment fee transparency measures, including requiring card schemes to improve scheme fee billing procedures, improving merchants’ ability to compare fees across acquirers, and providing visibility over the pass-through of interchange fee reductions to merchants.

Most of the changes will come into effect on 1 October 2026, including the removal of the surcharging framework and the changes to the domestic interchange fee caps. The introduction of the interchange fee cap on foreign cards and some changes to payment cost transparency will come into effect on 1 April 2027, to give the industry sufficient time to implement these more complex changes.

With the Review of Merchant Card Payment Costs and Surcharging now completed, the RBA is expected to launch the second phase of its review of retail payments regulation in mid-2026. The forthcoming review will consider the RBA's regulatory priorities under the expanded Payment Systems (Regulation) Act 1998, including any potential efficiency, competition and safety issues related to mobile wallets, three-party card schemes, buy-now-pay-later providers, and e-commerce platforms.

Consultation on the Payments Licensing Framework Exposure Draft Legislation

In April, AusPayNet responded to Treasury's consultation on the Regulation of Payment Service Providers (PSPs) Tranche 1 Exposure Draft Legislation. The release of the Exposure Draft was an important and significant step in this regulatory reform process, following three rounds of earlier consultation since July 2023.

Our submission expressed support for many of the key policy-level elements of the proposed framework. Together, these elements should help achieve regulation on the basis of 'same activity, same risks, same rules', and thereby help achieve a more level playing field across the industry while strengthening protections for end-users. These elements included: the refined definitions of payment products and services; leveraging the Australian Financial Services licensing (AFSL) regime with appropriate adjustments, supplemented by a tailored prudential regulation framework for payment entities that may pose financial stability risks; the introduction of a safeguarding framework for payment-related money; and a Ministerial rulemaking power for a mandatory ePayments Code.

However, we also identified a number of areas where further consideration or clarification was required to strengthen the framework's design and operation. Our key concerns and recommendations included:

• Regulatory perimeter: We reiterated concerns about the exclusion of critical back-end service providers from the scope of the Payment Technology and Enablement Services function. If these providers remain outside the licensing perimeter, we recommended that alternative mechanisms be considered to ensure that the key risks they pose will be appropriately managed.
   
• General obligations: We encouraged a review of whether the full set of AFSL obligations is both appropriate and sufficient for all payment functions, particularly in relation to operational resilience for non-prudentially-regulated PSPs.
   
• Safeguarding methods: We raised concerns about the significant restrictions on alternative safeguarding and segregation methods for non-APRA-regulated PSPs, and recommended that Treasury adopt a rules-based approach to alternative methods for all PSPs, rather than requiring case-by-case approval.
   
• Safeguarding and payment processing: We highlighted that further legislative clarity is needed on how the safeguarding provisions interact with standard industry processes (including merchant acquiring and card scheme settlement), to ensure these operations can continue to function consistently within the framework. 
   
• Prudential regulation: While broadly supporting the Prudential Regulation Bill, we recommended strengthening several areas including the registration model for Major Stored-Value Facility providers and the operational mechanics of the relevant PS money direction power.
   
• The ePayments Code: We asked Treasury to clarify the intended scope of the rulemaking power for the mandatory ePayments Code and provide an indicative timeline for the Code’s development.
   
• Transition and implementation: We recommended that ASIC and APRA commit to a clear timeline for finalising all critical supporting legislative and regulatory instruments, to ensure that the transition periods permitted in the enabling legislation are not eroded in practice. We also asked Treasury to adopt a minimum consultation period of six weeks for consultations of this scale, in light of the number of critical consultations that the industry has had to navigate during challenging time periods or on compressed timeframes over the past three years. 

AusPayNet looks forward to continuing our engagement with Treasury, ASIC and APRA to address these and other matters discussed in our submission, as the reforms progress towards finalisation and implementation over the coming months.

Cross-border payments

In April, we published the latest edition of the Cross-Border Payments Round-Up, our biannual newsletter on progress toward the G20 Roadmap for Enhancing Cross-border Payments. Read the newsletter on our website.

Economic crime

AusPayNet continues to progress key initiatives to strengthen our collective response to fraud and scams.

Under Operation Simpson, Members have been supporting referrals to law enforcement of money mule accounts with a nexus to scams, alongside work to enhance data sharing between banks and ReportCyber, the Australian Cyber Security Centre’s online cybercrime reporting system, to better identify scam-linked accounts.

Operation Murtoa is focused on suspected proceeds of crime held across Member institutions. Following direction from the Economic Crime Forum, we will soon launch a Member-wide survey to assist in quantifying the scale of suspected unclaimed proceeds of crime across the industry.

This will establish a baseline view of holdings, inform the design of lawful disposal pathways, and support more effective referral processes as volumes of these funds increase. Our recent engagement with AUSTRAC reinforces a shared commitment to improving pathways to restrain and dispose of suspected proceeds of crime.

Work is also underway to develop a comprehensive card fraud and scams mitigation program, spanning domestic and international card-not-present fraud, scams prevention, first-party misuse, and enhanced data insights. We are commencing bilateral discussions to inform this strategy. 

AusPayNet events

The AusPayNet Summit will return next year

Following the 2025 Summit, our fourth consecutive in-person Summit held at the International Convention Centre (ICC) in December, a review was conducted to test whether the timing of the Summit was a barrier to attendance. Due to limited availability at the ICC, the date for the Summit has gradually pushed closer to Christmas, with last year’s event falling in the last working week of the year. A post-event survey of attendees in 2025 saw 30 per cent of respondents expressing constraints with the usual end of year timing.

In response, we are excited to announce that the timing of The AusPayNet Summit has been recalibrated, with the next Summit scheduled for July 2027. The new timing will see our flagship event take place at the start of the financial year every year.  

We look forward to sharing more details in the coming months.
 

Brisbane event

Last month, we welcomed more than 40 Member representatives to our second Brisbane Member Event, which was generously hosted by Great Southern Bank. The afternoon comprised of two information sessions.  

In the first, a panel on Payments Policy & Reforms, the AusPayNet team provided insights on the current economic and political environment, derived from our direct engagement in Canberra. Attendees were also taken on a deep dive into the RBA’s recent announcement on interchange and surcharging fee reforms.  

In the second, AusPayNet Chief Operating Officer, Luke Wilson, interviewed Chief Strategy Officer, Rajat Jain, on the Future of A2A Payments and AusPayNet’s role in helping establish one common, industry view of the long-term desired state for the A2A ecosystem. Thank you to all who attended.
 

AES Member Webinars

In February, we hosted a member webinar focusing on the strategy for implementing the migration of the Australian card payments system to AES, including the key milestones and timetable for the Program. The webinar included a presentation from Dr Ramtin Shams, AusPayNet’s Migration Lead for the Program, followed by a Q&A session moderated by Riaz Hussain, our Head of Security and Standards.

Last month, we hosted a webinar focusing on the Program’s Industry Testing Strategy and provided an overview of what to test, how to test, and how testing will be governed, executed and reported. The webinar included insights from Ross Greenan, AusPayNet’s Program and Testing Director. 

New members

AusPayNet is pleased to have recently welcomed the following Members:

• Ebury Partners Australia Pty Ltd as a BECS Tier 2 Member (effective 30 March 2026) 
   
• Newland Payment Technology PTE. LTD as a PSP Member (effective 7 April 2026). 

For more information on AusPayNet membership, please visit our website.