From a speech by Michele Bullock RBA Assistant Governor (Financial System) – Address to Seamless Payments 2018.
As you know, the NPP launched to the public in mid February. It is the culmination of more than 5 years’ work from inception to launch. It involved unprecedented cooperation between financial institutions to build the capability to send and receive individual payment messages between themselves in real time, with settlement also occurring transaction-by-transaction through the Reserve Bank’s Fast Settlement Service. But it also required banks to upgrade their internal systems to allow posting to customer accounts within a few seconds. The resources involved in delivering the system as a whole were substantial.
Australia is obviously not the first country to build a fast payments system. FIS in its 2017 report on fast retail payment systems noted that there were some retail payment systems with real-time features as early as the 1970s and 1980s.[1] The report listed 25 countries with live real-time systems in 2017. It listed a further 10 systems under development, at that time including Australia. FIS also provided a useful taxonomy to compare and contrast the various systems – its Faster Payment Innovation Index (FPII). The index rates faster payment systems on the basis of the features they provide. At a basic level, in order to be classified as a fast payment service the system must provide interbank, account-to-account payments in less than one minute end-to-end and be irrevocable. But, the more value-added services and openness to innovation, the higher the rating.
The Australian NPP was not rated in this report since it was not live at the time. But it certainly will offer many of the features that rate highly in the FPII. For example, the taxonomy lists ISO standard and 24/7 availability as being highly desirable features enhancing customer value – the NPP offers both these. It lists fast settlement, the ability to include remittance information with payment and the ability to assign an alias to a bank account as being some of the optional features that maximise customer value. The NPP also delivers these features. There are other capabilities that the NPP does not currently provide – like ‘pull payment’ capability – but the infrastructure will allow other services to be offered in the future.
One of the things that is unique about our NPP is the architecture. There are three facets to this. The first is that the infrastructure for exchanging messages is based on a distributed architecture rather than a centralised hub. Participating institutions implement payment gateways that exchange messages with other payment gateways. There is no centralised infrastructure that processes and switches messages. One key advantage of this architecture is that there is no central point of failure. It also means that many of the functions that might typically be performed in a hub, such as fraud monitoring and exceptions processing, are done by the individual participants. This might be desirable for institutions that want to maintain control over these processes.
The second facet of the architecture that is quite innovative is the separation of the clearing and settlement infrastructure from commercial overlays. The infrastructure has been set up as a utility, and pricing will be on a cost recovery basis. This infrastructure can then be utilised by any number of commercial ‘overlays’ to deliver services that use the NPP’s real-time clearing and settlement capabilities. The first of these is Osko – initially offering person-to-person payments but within a year or so offering payment with document and request to pay. It is also expected that other innovative services will look to leverage the real-time payment capability of the NPP.
The third relatively unusual facet is the real-time transaction-by-transaction settlement of retail payments 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Australia has had a real-time gross settlement system for high-value payments for weekday settlements for the past 20 years. And this is indeed best practice around the world for high-value payments. But not many countries currently provide real-time settlement of retail payments, and even fewer offer it 24/7. Many fast retail payments services, for example, settle payments in batches through the day or only during business hours. The advantage of utilising real-time settlement in our fast payment service is that it extinguishes settlement risk and removes the need for other controls over settlement risk, such as caps on exposures. The fact that these controls are not required removes some limitations that might otherwise need to be considered by overlay service providers as they design their products.
So now we have this world-class infrastructure, what for the future?
The first point to note is that it is still early days. Given the complexity of the build and the long-term nature of this important piece of infrastructure, the launch was never intended to be a ‘big bang’. While there had been extensive testing ahead of launch, including an extended period of live proving, moving into production always uncovers some issues. A cautious approach to ramping up volumes was therefore an appropriate way to manage the operational risks.
Second, the experience of fast payment systems around the world suggests that volumes will increase quite slowly at first. It took the UK Fast Payment Service around 3½ years to get to 10 transactions per person per annum and Swish, the Swedish system, just under 3 years to get to this level. There are probably a couple of reasons for the initially relatively slow growth in volumes. It will take some time for people to become familiar with the new system – people are typically quite set in their payment habits. Furthermore, like all networks, there are positive externalities the more participants there are. That is, as more financial institutions offer fast payments and the reach of the system grows, it provides greater value to both individuals and businesses. If none of my family and friends can receive payments through the NPP I am less likely to sign up for an alias and use it. But the more people I can pay using the system (and the more people I can receive money from) the higher value I get from the system.
Third, as noted earlier, the system has been set up to encourage the development of commercial ‘overlays’ using the real-time payment capability to deliver value-added services to consumers and businesses. Aside from the additional Osko services in prospect, possible overlays might include services for superannuation, e-invoicing and motor vehicle sales. I am sure there are many innovative minds turning to the possibilities.
This brings me to an issue that has caused some concern among potential new players in this space – access to the NPP. They observe that the system has been built by the financial institutions and is governed by a board made up of those institutions, including the four major banks. They worry that these institutions will either make participation very difficult or costly or, alternatively, will have the inside running on developing and launching commercial overlay services.
I think there are a few reasons to be optimistic that access will not be an issue. To begin with, as I noted earlier, the NPP is a utility. It is aiming to cover costs, not make a profit. Further, given that many of its costs are fixed, it is in the interests of NPP Australia (NPPA) to get as many payments through the system as possible to lower the per-transaction cost.
The structure of the board and the constitution also provide some protection. The board is comprised of eight participant financial institutions (the four major banks plus four elected representatives of smaller institutions), two independent non-executive directors (of which one is chair) plus a director representing the Reserve Bank. Each director has one vote and the constitution notes that an objective of NPPA is to promote the public interest, including through fair access.
But it is also worth noting that the NPP at its core is an infrastructure that facilitates clearing of payment messages between financial institutions and settlement of those obligations across accounts at the Reserve Bank. In this sense, it is similar to other clearing and settlement systems – cheques, direct entry or payment cards, for example. It is not necessary, or even necessarily efficient, for all financial institutions to participate directly in clearing and settlement. In the NPP, for example, there are three aggregators that provide indirect access to institutions that do not want to incur the cost of participating directly. Indeed, there are already around 50 smaller banks, credit unions and building societies that are able to offer fast payments to their customers using the aggregators.
Similarly, it is not necessary for non-financial institutions that want to use the real-time capability of the NPP to participate directly in clearing and settlement. Just as they use the rails of other payment systems through a financial institution to offer their services to customers, they will be able to use the NPP. NPPA is already engaging with start-ups on how they might utilise the infrastructure. More generally, if a business doesn’t like the price for fast payments it is getting from its bank, there are many other institutions that can offer an alternative.
In the end, though, if it looks as though lack of access is stifling competition, the Reserve Bank has the power to designate and set an access regime. As I said, I am fairly optimistic that we will not have to. But it is always an option.
