The 2025 AP+ Roadmap outlines key industry and regulatory requirements alongside other major initiatives.
Move to NPP: to prepare for the decommissioning of BECS in 2030, we are focusing on ensuring the NPP has the capability, capacity, reach and resilience to easily manage the expected volume of direct entry payments. This work includes:
- NPP process & message usage uplift: developing an approach for the return of bulk payments processed through the NPP; introducing batch identifiers to support the grouping of transactions; introducing a standard payment instruction format that end users can provide to their financial institution; and uplifting PayTo message usage (Merchant Category Codes, Ultimate Creditor) to support improved fraud screening.
- NPP ISO version upgrade: upgrading the ISO20022 version that the NPP operates on to enable software integrations by international vendors and benefit from innovations adopted in other markets.
- NPP Multi Credit Transfer solution: AP+ will begin detailed design work with industry in 2025 to support high-volume bulk payments with multiple transactions contained within a single message.
- NPP cloud migration: this will allow directly connected participating organisations to integrate their back office with the NPP platform infrastructure via public cloud providers.
- NPP capacity upgrades: ensuring that processing capacity is uplifted across the platform and participating organisations.
Mobile Least Cost Routing (LCR) implementation: the industry is expected to support mobile LCR by the end of 2024.
QR acceptance: our goal is to enable initiation for in-store payments using any smart device, initially via QR. It aims to provide consumers with a greater variety of services at the point of sale and integrate other experiences such as loyalty programs or simplified integrated initiation.
eftpos – token cryptogram: introducing a token cryptogram for cardholder-initiated transactions to enhance the security and efficiency of the Australian payment ecosystem, while fostering customer trust, and compliance with evolving industry standards.
Confirmation of Payee (CoP): a layer of protection for payments to a BSB and account number in Australia. By matching the account name, BSB and account number entered with the details held by the recipient’s bank, Confirmation of Payee gives more confidence that payments are going to the right account.
eftpos – Click to Pay implementation: AP+ is standing up a Click to Pay service with the ambition to streamline e-commerce checkout and make it consistent, convenient and secure.
NPP PayTo porting: allow consumers to move PayTo agreements between financial institutions without having to contact each merchant and re-authorise their PayTo agreements. This will reduce the impact on merchants when their customers change banks.
Osko / SCT harmonisation: brings together the BPAY OSKO service with the native Single Credit Transfer (SCT) NPP product to simplify real-time payments into a single service, with a single brand and clear value proposition, streamlined rules and associated operational processes.
eftpos to update to 3DS 2.3: AP+ plans to support 3DS 2.3 to help reduce cart abandonment rates and provide enhanced risk management.
3DES migration to AES: Australian card payments will be migrated from 3DES to a new encryption standard (AES) by 2030.
Portal consolidation: AP+ is consolidating the developer experience across our products into a singe developer portal. We are also creating a single front door for members with a unified and streamlined member portal.
Cyber security capability uplift, fraud capability uplift and trust layer: AP+ is uplifting its maturity in the foundational cyber capabilities required to govern, identify, protect, detect, respond and recover from cyber incidents. AP+ is also expanding fraud capability across each AP+ scheme and supporting industry fraud and scam initiatives.
Source: 2025 AP+ Roadmap – Australian Payments Plus
