Although the New Payments Platform went live in November, the NPP had its public launch at 12.01am this morning.
NPP Australia Limited oversees the platform, which facilitates real-time transfers between banks. In addition, the NPP allows “data enriched” transactions — essentially allowing a transaction to have longer descriptions than are possible currently or attachments such as a receipt.
The NPP also supports PayID, which allows payments to be sent using alternative identifiers instead of BSBs and account numbers. The system will enable the linking of an account to an identifier such as a phone number, email address or ABN (depending on the particular financial institution involved).
Osko by BPAY is the first “overlay” service to use PayID.
NPP Australia was founded by 13 financial institutions: ANZ, Australian Settlements Limited, Bendigo and Adelaide Bank, Citigroup, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Cuscal Limited, HSBC, Indue, ING Direct, Macquarie Bank, NAB, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) and Westpac.
“The public launch of the NPP represents the delivery of a major piece of national infrastructure,” said RBA governor Philip Lowe. Lowe is also chair of the Payments System Board (PSB).
“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 New Payments Platform has a unique layered 'open access' design which allows for different entities to leverage the Platform’s functionality in different ways,” NPP Australia CEO Adrian Lovney said.“Innovative organisations can choose to build upon the platform’s capabilities to develop and launch ‘overlay services’ on the platform,” the CEO said in a statement.
“These could be payments experiences, or they could be business applications that enable significant organisational efficiencies.
“For payments experiences, the Platform’s speed will be key, as well the convenience offered by the PayID addressing service and the data that can be transmitted alongside a payment. We see the Platform’s data capability as a potential boon for future business applications.
“From simpler invoicing to automatic reconciliation across core business processes; as organisations continue to digitise their back offices we believe the New Payments Platform will provide an important building block for innovation.”