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From days to minutes: Payment services provider Indue accelerates its ability to innovate using Azure
Indue has been a significant player in Australia’s payments sector for more than 50 years. The payments technology provider is an Authorised Deposit Taking institution who specialises in helping organisations of all types adapt to and benefit from the latest innovations in payments technology.
Through its solutions – which encompasses everything from card management and mobile payments to direct entry transactions and real-time fraud detection – Indue aims to eliminate the need for multiple third-party engagements and streamline the payment system implementation process.
Indue is a founding member of Australia’s New Payments Platform (NPP), launched in February 2018 to modernise the nation’s payment infrastructure. The platform enables faster, more flexible and data-rich transactions to meet the evolving needs of Australian consumers, businesses and financial institutions.
Keith Bromwich, Head of Architecture at Indue, says Indue has helped clients adopt the NPP since its inception.
“Our role is to allow tier 2 and 3 financial institutions such as mutuals, regional banks and BAAS providers to access the NPP via our own platform,” he explains.
In June 2023, the NPP introduced PayTo, a new digital way for merchants and businesses to initiate real-time payments from their customers’ bank accounts. PayTo solves many existing challenges with direct debit payments, including processing delays, limited transaction information, and a lack of control for consumers and businesses over payments.
To ensure it could help clients adopt the new payment method, Indue embarked on an ambitious project in March 2022 to transform its technology infrastructure – largely made up of on-premise data centres – and adopt a more cloud-native approach.
In May 2022, Indue engaged Microsoft partner Arinco to help it develop enterprise-scale landing zones and a robust application programming interface (API) platform in Azure.
“The people we worked with at Arinco were absolute knowledge leaders,” says Bromwich. “They helped us make the right decisions by providing the pros and cons.”
Arinco used a flexible delivery approach to facilitate development timelines, which saw the first application landing zones for PayTo being implemented by early July 2022. This enabled Indue’s developers to build new capabilities for testing by October 2022.
As this was Indue’s first major deployment of modern web APIs in Azure, Arinco supported and educated Indue’s developers and engineers by leveraging its partnership with Microsoft.
“Firstly, we embedded consultants within Indue’s development teams, focusing on accelerating outcomes and providing best practice guidance for topics such as .NET development, Azure API deployment and security,” says James Westall, Account Executive at Arinco.
“Secondly, our consultants worked with Indue’s platform engineers, sharing our expertise with them as we developed code for each landing zone. This meant that at transition time, Indue engineers were starting from a solid knowledge base.
“Lastly, we partnered with Microsoft to deliver hands-on Azure Accelerate workshops. These covered key topics identified by Indue, enabling employees to get familiar with Azure in a safe environment with instructor guidance.”
The other challenge that Arinco helped Indue solve was the operational sign-off of its Azure capability.
“As an entity that’s regulated by the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority, Indue must be able to attest to the security, stability and robustness of its services,” explains Westall. “The deployment that we developed was designed to remain compliant using Azure and third-party security tools, including the capability to hold Payment Card Industry data.
“We also assisted Indue in developing several operational documents and procedures, ensuring key details about running solutions on Azure were available for external auditors.”
Arinco’s accelerated approach enabled Indue to launch its PayTo integration within the tight timeframe and begin onboarding clients in June 2023.
Enhancing innovation in the cloud
While Indue is still in the early stages of its cloud journey, its event-driven architecture in Azure is already delivering benefits. These include increased flexibility and scalability, which enable Indue’s developers and engineers to deploy any project – not just PayTo – in the cloud much faster and move from business idea to development workload in minutes or hours rather than days.
“The innovation piece is a key focus for Indue and its customers,” says Ryan Spain, Chief Information Officer at Indue. “Leveraging cloud-based technologies like Azure gives us access to a much wider variety of innovative capabilities in a fraction of the time compared to on-premise, and enhances the products and services we can offer.”
Indue’s move to the cloud has also helped them simplify its technology stack and reduce operational costs. Transitioning its Corporate Services (Virtual Desktop, remote access, and Office environment) to the Azure Virtual Desktop capability which operates within the enterprise-scale landing zone structure.
Now, key personnel can focus more on value-adding tasks rather than maintaining the performance and security of Indue’s hardware and software.
“We don’t have to worry about data centre connectivity or patching. All of that low-level maintenance is done by Microsoft,” says Bromwich.
Indue plans to grow its cloud footprint in Azure by kicking off two other major projects in 2023. One will focus on implementing a big data lake that leverages Microsoft’s advanced analytics capabilities. The other project will focus on migrating Indue’s on-premise Microsoft Dynamics 365 platform to Azure. Both projects will further enhance Indues’ ability to deliver innovative payment solutions and a better customer experience, according to Spain.
“This is a strategic partnership with Microsoft,” he says. “They’ve been on the journey with us from the start, and we really appreciate the assistance and guidance they’ve provided. The partnership has been a key enabler for facilitating both the PayTo integration and our broader cloud strategy.”
Source: Microsoft News 30 June 2023
Top Five Banking Predictions for 2022
Top Five Banking Predictions for 2022
Keen to keep pace with the impact of recent global events and an accelerated digital shift, how are financial institutions, consumers and SMEs adapting their behaviours in coming months? RFI Global’s infographic explores our top predictions for 2022.
2020 Pandemic: How might it change the ways we pay?
2020 Pandemic: How might it change the ways we pay?
Although the total number of payments in the Australian market is currently suffering a severe decline, as economic activity is strongly curtailed, what might happen to the ways consumers pay after the 2020 pandemic? Guest writers, David Oierholm and Lance Blockley of The Initiatives Group, offer their view.
The COVID-19 2020 Pandemic is having an unprecedented impact on how we live and work. We are planning for the worst and hoping for something better. No matter how long it takes for the crisis to pass, 2020 will be a year that is not forgotten quickly.
It will undoubtedly be a period of change, some of which will alter the way we do things forever.
We are likely to wash our hands more frequently, and we will be much better at conducting remote meetings using platforms such as Zoom, Webex, Skype for Business, GoToMeetings, etc. Telemedicine will likely become more prevalent, as will the ability and propensity to work from home effectively.
We will be super-sensitised to microbes, and, given the economic impacts being experienced, we may be more concerned about the sustainability of the companies we buy things from, together perhaps with more conservative views regarding our ongoing employment and income. Indeed, the cross-border supply chains that have been constructed over the last 15+ years of globalisation have been shown to be a potential weakness (e.g. a key global production site of surgical masks being in Wuhan), so perhaps domestic manufacturing will get a boost everywhere and cross-border commercial transactions decline.
Although the total number of payments in the Australian market is currently suffering a severe decline, as economic activity is strongly curtailed, what might happen to the ways consumers pay? Not necessarily in the short term – although many merchants are now refusing to take cash, travel card issuance & usage has crashed, and cross-border payments (a key revenue source for the international schemes) are drying up. Rather, we are looking at the potential longer term residual impacts.
In The Initiatives Group white paper “The Changing Face of Consumer payments in Australia”, we identified that the way we pay takes a long time to change. It is all about trends, and long ones at that. The following graph was used to show how the ways we pay have changed over the past 15 years.
The trends are clear – cash and cheques are on the decline, and fast becoming in the minority of transactions. Electronic payments continue to increase. Cards are now more than 60% of transactions, with the growth in debit cards far outstripping credit cards. It is now quite normal to pay for a morning coffee (currently only available as “take away”) using a card – not so long ago a $3.50 purchase would have been made with cash.
What might happen to cash?
“Fed Plans Release of Clean Cash As Virus Spreads” (pymnts.com, March 22, 2020)
The decline in the use of cash will accelerate, along with an associated decline in ATM usage (noting that for every ATM withdrawal that does not happen, an additional 10-15 electronic transactions will be generated, mainly on debit cards).
Cash carries bacteria 1 (no prior studies seem to have focused on viruses!). Both cash and bacteria travel fast. Even though it has been found that polymer notes, like those used in Australia, carry less bacteria than (absorptive) paper notes such as those in the USA and China, consumers and merchants alike will be less keen on handling cash, and more keen on using electronic payments. Indeed, the UK has just lifted the contactless limit from GBP30 to GBP45 to help further reduce the use of cash. More locally in Australia, one of your authors has found that cash is no longer accepted at the local Coles Supermarket, Harris Farm Markets and the golf club (which is closed for now anyway).
So, are plastic cards the answer?
Australians are the world leaders in the use of contactless open-loop payments, with well in excess of 90% of card present transactions being contactless. This means that, for transactions under $100, we don’t need to touch a terminal that somebody else has used or handed us. We also don’t have to hand our card over to a stranger. That’s good, right?
Well, maybe not… unfortunately there are studies, albeit in the USA, where contactless payments are still in their infancy, that have shown that cards “can be grimier than cold hard cash”.2
However, it still feels safer to use a card that only you have held than notes and coins that have gone through multiple hands, so plastic cards will quickly pick up transactions from cash.
How about other transactions that use the card rails?
Mobile Wallets
Despite the high ownership of smartphones and Australians’ love of contactless payments, until recently, the take up of mobile wallets such as Apple Pay, Google Pay and Samsung Pay (the “Pays”) has been slow. It may depend on your industry and your demographic, but The Initiatives Group has heard conflicting reports. Claims of 25% of POS transactions being handled via the Pays have been offset by merchant claims of far far lower percentages, hence we would suggest that the average across all contactless payments is still under 10%.
Regardless, the use is set to accelerate. Your phone may or may not be a great carrier of bacteria, but it is something you will touch anyway, so what’s the difference if you now use it for payments and avoid fiddling around with your wallet for a card.
Wearables
Whilst wearables are only another form factor for using the Pays, their use is likely to increase as an even more “contactless contactless” form of payment. Notwithstanding we believe that wearables, perhaps other than smart watches, will remain relatively niche.
In-app payments
In-app payments are likely to be a big winner from the COVID-19 crisis. Seamless payments will be the most contactless of contactless payments. Whilst in the short-term popular use cases such as Uber transport will take a significant hit, there will be many new use cases that become available earlier or even more popular – think of ordering home delivery (from supermarkets, for prepared food e.g. Menulog, Ubereats) and petrol stations (where something like the Caltex app avoids the need to enter the shopfront). We will be more ready to form new “safe” habits, and, if used frequently enough, these use cases will be habit forming, just as the adoption of contactless card payments was slow until Woolworths and Coles offered them (back in 2012).
We found the new 13cabs “No Touch Parcel Deliveries” of interest. Whilst no-touch may not be as big a deal from 2021, here is another reason to get into the habit of using in-app payments for taxi services. In the future will we see the groceries delivered paid within the 13cabs app, or the taxi delivery paid for within the Coles or Woolworths app?
Peer to peer payments
As handling cash becomes less popular, might we now see electronic peer to peer payments use accelerate. Perhaps this will provide stimulus to the use of PayID, Beem It and card-tocard systems. Although current social distancing and work-fromhome orders may well diminish the need to pay our friends and relations in the near term.
eCommerce card not present
In the short-term, eCommerce spend on travel and discretionary items has tanked, however online ordering of grocery goods and fresh foods is up globally. Discretionary spend, such as fashion, will recover once people are again allowed to physically interact. Grocery and fresh food ordering online will be a new habit – whether for home, work or locker delivery, or click and collect. Although it may not maintain at COVID-19 levels, this will likely fuel more rapid long term growth in eCommerce retail spend.
Monthly payments
The economic impact of potential (or actual) unemployment, of recession and of media noise about depression, will all make consumers more wary of both the sustainability of companies that they deal with and their own ability to pay in annual large lump sums. We predict this will lead to a preference for annual payments to be made monthly (already a trend before the crisis), and not necessarily by auto direct debit (as consumers may wish to retain control). In addition, this preference may lead to consumers demanding that they are not penalised with any surcharge for paying monthly.
Noting that, just as the decline in ATM use accelerates the volume of electronic payments, so too does monthly payment . . . 12 transactions rather than one.
New products
Adversity is often the mother of invention, so it is likely that we will see a range of new electronic payment products, use cases and services being created.
Opportunities only for the card rails?
An emphatic “No”. As noted above, online real-time payments over the NPP may be accelerated – whether by Osko, other overlay services or by ‘pay anyone’ (previously via direct entry) payments growing faster. The increased volumes allowing the NPP to become less expensive per transaction.
Perhaps a trend towards mobile phone payments will improve the use case for NPP payments on your phone at POS, enabled by QR codes? Notwithstanding, we do expect that there will be even more new overlay service activity that takes advantage of the NPP.
Conclusion – How might Covid 2020 Pandemic Change the Way We Pay?
The current COVID-19 crisis will see payment volumes drop sharply as economic activity stalls. Within the remaining payment activity, the mix of payments will change:
- The reduction in cash and ATM usage that has been occurring over many years will accelerate into a steep decline
- The cross-border usage of payment cards will drop to low levels
- Use of contactless card and mobile payments will rise
- Use of remote services/ordering, and with them the associated remote payments (eCommerce, in-app, other online), will increase
- A move to monthly payments.
Depending upon the length of the crisis, many of these changes will become habitual and are likely to outlast the short term impact of the virus – such that the retail payments mix in the Australian economy will be altered forevermore.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the view of Indue. The Initiatives Group has advised participants in the payments market since the 1990’s – including issuers, acquirers, third-party processors, technology providers and associations. The Initiatives Group has a strong relationship with Indue, and can help participants in the payments sector generate more value from their markets and customers. To find out how, please get in touch.
Sources:
1 A Oxford University study in 2014 found that the average European banknote contained 26,000 bacteria which could be potentially harmful to a person’s health; and market research has found the majority of European consumers rank physical money as being more unhygienic than the hand rails on public transport
2 https://www.fastcompany.com/90480199/how-companies-can-support-their-employee-caregivers-duringthecovid-19-outbreak
Insight: The changing face of consumer payments in Australia
Insight: The changing face of consumer payments in Australia
Our guest writer, David Oierholm, Director of The Initiatives Group, sheds light on the changes and trends of consumer payments in Australia.
The ways in which consumer payments in Australia are made is often likened to a train system comprised of the “rails” that carry the carriages (the payment systems), and the “carriages” that carry the passengers (the individual payments).
The media will have us believe that the payments landscape in Australia is constantly and rapidly changing. To an extent this is correct – but this is all about new “carriages” rather than “rails”.
Furthermore, simply because there are new ways to pay on offer, it does not mean that we all immediately change the way we pay. For example, it took well over 5 years for both BPAY and (much later) contactless card payments to become mainstream.
In Australia, there has only been one new set of rails introduced in the past 25 years (The New Payments Platform (NPP), 2018)
The Way We Pay
It is about trends, and long-term ones at that. The following graph shows how the ways we pay (our use of the rails) have changed over the past 16 years, exhibiting slow movements and not, as many media commentators would suggest, overnight leaps.
The trends are clear – cash (as proxied by ATM withdrawals) and cheque usage are on the decline, and fast becoming the minority of transactions. Electronic payments continue to increase. Cards now account for more than 50% of all payment transactions, with the growth in debit card activity far outstripping credit card since 2007. It is now quite normal to pay for a morning coffee using a card – not so long ago a $3.50 purchase would have been made with cash.
Will cash and cheques ever completely disappear? It is more likely that cheques will disappear, but only when the industry and/or regulator set a termination date – otherwise someone, somewhere will keep using them. However, the ability to access and use cash is considered critical for members of society who may be unbanked, and for remote residents where electronic payments may either be unavailable or inconsistent. Even in those economies closest to being cashless, such as Sweden, there are government requirements for the economy not to become cashless – at least not until no one is left behind or disenfranchised.
In 2019, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed a law requiring that all bricks and mortar retail businesses must accept cash – this even includes the Amazon Go stores (more about them later). This move is to make sure that the city’s poorest residents are not shut out of access to basic goods and services. Whereas “cash not accepted” signs are common in shops in Sweden.
The Rails
The rails for electronic payments in Australia include the card rails (Visa, Mastercard, Amex, eftpos), the rails for direct entry and direct debit payments known as BECS (Bulk Electronic Payment System), the real-time payments rails operated by New Payment Platform Australia (NPP) and the international bank to bank transfer rails (SWIFT). The only one of these sets of rails that has been introduced within the last 25 years is the NPP, launched last year.
(Source: The Initiatives Group)
The Carriages
What runs on the rails is where the new action has been, as a plethora of “veneers” have been placed on top of the payment rails, giving the perception that the movement of money has changed. What has changed, and greatly, is the consumer interface, which has become more convenient, simple to use, frictionless and seamless. But, as noted earlier, just because a new way to pay is being offered there is no guarantee that it will be used.
Mobile Wallets (Mobile Payments)
Mobile wallets such as Apple Pay, Google Pay and Samsung Pay, otherwise known as “The Pays”, have arguably received more media headlines than any other payments related topic over the past few years. Despite this, it is estimated that they represent fewer than 5% of card present transactions, albeit that there now seems to be some acceleration in the adoption rate.
Requiring a credit or debit card to fund a transaction, The Pays operate on the Visa, Mastercard, American Express and, to a lesser extent, the eftpos rails. They have been offered in Australia since 2015 when Apple Pay was launched with Amex.
Even though some would describe it as simply a new “form factor” – a contactless payment (now over 90% of card present transactions) using a phone rather than a plastic card – the rollout through the payments industry has been slow. A popular hypothesis is that using your phone currently offers little benefit over using a plastic card – that is, there is no value added.
In addition, there has been significant reticence amongst the major banks to fund the fees payable to Apple Pay, which also comes with the limitation of no other application being able to access the NFC interface on the iPhone. However, as of today the only major Australian bank that does not offer Apple Pay (considered the vanguard of The Pays) is Westpac, so it is felt that the current low usage rates will increase to more significant levels over the next few years, assisted by use on mass transit.
A different type of mobile wallet where you can “pre-fund” your account prior to purchase (or link to a “top up” source of funds) is particularly popular in China, and increasingly so throughout Asia. AliPay and WeChat Pay both from China are prime examples.
When making purchases, these systems run on their own sets of rails with the transaction driven by a QR code interface (overcoming Apple’s NFC quarantine). This has permitted significant growth in electronic payment acceptance due to the simple and low cost set up for the payee. However, to fund the account, money is transferred from the user’s card or bank account.
This means the funding uses existing payment rails. To date the use of QR codes in payments in Australia has primarily been limited to visiting Chinese tourists. Australians are already well served by NFC contactless payments, so, whilst there may be more value-adding capability within a QR code, there is little incentive for consumers to change.
Another popular wallet, although not so much in mobile format (at least not in Australia), is PayPal. Created as a payment wallet to make secure online transactions, the PayPal wallet can be instantly funded by a credit or debit account, or pre-funded. An interesting contrast is that in the US keeping funds in a PayPal wallet is popular, whereas in Australia it is not.
In-app Payments or “payments in the background”
Popularised by the success of the Uber rideshare app and the “just get out of the car at your destination and walk away” payment experience, in-app payments are the topic of a separate whitepaper published by The Initiatives Group.
Sometimes criticised for making it too easy for consumers to overspend as they do not have a “transaction moment” to reconsider their purchase, in-app payments are growing even faster than e-commerce. Prime examples include Uber – familiar to most of us; Grab, which dominates carshare in South East Asia, and which is now promoting its payment service in its own right as “GrabPay”; and the Hey You (Beat the Q) café pre-order and payment aggregator app.
In the USA, Starbucks is prolific enough to have its own pre-order and payment app, which accounts for a significant proportion of their sales and is integrated with the Starbucks Loyalty program. Further loyalty integrations are underway. For example, in the USA you can use American Express Membership Rewards points to pay for your Uber ride. Amazon is taking the in-app, seamless shopping and payment experience to the nth degree, (possibly out of the budgetary capabilities of most retailers) with its Amazon Go “no lines, no checkout” concept stores, it is extreme but an insight into what is already possible!
In Australia, Woolworths is currently trialling “Scan & Go” with selected Woolworths Rewards loyalty members in Sydney – it is a variation on Amazon Go, where shoppers scan items when they take them from the shelf and then just tap off when leaving the store. This is important, as Woolworths and Coles are able to move the market: it was really not until they adopted the NFC technology that contactless payments became commonplace in Australia.
The Form Factor
Many innovations on the existing payment rails are actually changes in the form factor. As noted earlier, mobile payments are, for the most part today, simply the ability to use your phone to make a contactless card payment, rather than use the physical card itself.
Other new form factors include smart watches, including the Apple watch, Samsung Gear watches, as well as Garmin and Fitbit with Garmin Pay and Fitbit Pay respectively. Similarly, there are wrist bands and tabs attached to watch bands, even sunglasses and jewellery, such as the Bankwest Halo Payment rings. Current opinion is that these “wearables” will become popular, but amongst niche groups rather than the general population – for example waterproof bands and rings for swimmers, surfers, runners and cyclists.
BPAY and Pay Anyone
BPAY and Pay Anyone (Direct Credit on internet banking or a banking app) are payment methods that use the BECS Direct Entry system. Both allow for bank account to bank account transfers five days a week (excluding Public Holidays), with banks transferring funds 5 times per day (but not necessarily posting them to accounts that frequently).
Reliable, secure and low cost, however it is possible that a transfer can take some time to occur or appear in the receiving account – if the transfer is made late on Friday afternoon and is to a bank that is not posting intra-day settlements it may not be until the following Tuesday that the funds appear in the recipient’s account.
Whilst BPAY volume continues to grow, BPAY now somewhat competes with itself as the provider of the first “overlay” service “Osko” for the NPP, which allows real time payments between consumers and businesses via BSB and account number or with a registered PayID (mobile number, email address or ABN) linked to their bank account. Further, a number of Financial Institutions have and are moving their Pay Anyone / Direct Credit transactions onto the NPP rails, instead of using BECS.
P2P (peer-to peer) Payments
Particularly popular in geographies as diverse as the USA and China (perhaps due to the antiquated and previously limited payment systems available), P2P payments allow instant payments between consumers – splitting the bar tab, paying your share of the rent, getting money to the kids quickly, etc.
Venmo (now owned by PayPal) in the USA and WeChat Pay in China are prime examples. Both allow instant payments between other Venmo or WeChat Pay users from a pre-funded wallet. Perhaps they could be considered alternative rails, however, funding still comes from the existing rails transfer methods as these are linked to accounts.
In Australia, BeemIt allows P2P payments between BeemIt users, requiring only a Visa or Mastercard debit card for registration. Interestingly, BeemIt accesses bank accounts by using Visa and Mastercard for the authorisation messaging, then uses the eftpos rails to achieve the instant funds transfer.
As with many new ways to pay, BeemIt has not (yet) become popular in Australia as it has yet to gain sufficient penetration or ubiquity, and perhaps does not solve a significant problem that Australian consumers have (given the various other ways that they have to pay).
Real-time Payments
The establishment of real time payments platforms, moving and posting money between accounts 24×7, such as Australia’s NPP, is a major global trend. The UK has had “Faster Payments” and Singapore “FAST” for some time. More recently, Malaysia “DuitNow” and TCH (“The Clearing House”) in the USA have introduced real time payment platforms.
The NPP was launched in February 2018, the first new payment rails in Australia for 25 years (the prior launch was BECS in 1993). The NPP is an initiative that was primarily driven by the Reserve Bank of Australia, following its review of innovation in payments, and is co-owned by 13 banking organisations. It allows for real time payments between bank accounts.
To date, it has been held back by a somewhat uncoordinated introduction through the banking system. Whilst over 2 million PayID’s have been registered, use of the Osko payment “overlay service” has been relatively limited. This is likely to change once all banks deliver the range of features available, more entities register PayID, and business applications such as “Request to Pay” and a central consent management platform are delivered (effectively allowing Direct Debit transactions to be introduced by the NPP).
Even Sweden’s “Swish” success story has taken almost 7 years since its establishment in 2012 to reach a total of 1 billion transactions through the system.
Use cases range from instant P2P payments, to real time payment of employee wages, superannuation, even to the ability to safely buy/sell a used car privately on the weekend without the need for cash transfers or bank cheques.
(Image Source: Osko.com.au)
Real-time / Faster Cross Border Payments
Cross border account to account payments have primarily been the domain of Swift and its 165 member banks. Even if the origin or destination banks are not members, the 165 banks can act as “correspondent” banks to route funds into the recipient country and currency, then onto the recipient bank. It is reliable, but can be slow, opaque and relatively expensive. The Swift rails also enable currency transfer services such as Western Union.
Faced with the emerging faster cross border payment challengers, such as crypto currencies, Ripple, Visa B2B Connect, and Visa and Mastercard acquiring FX transfer platforms, Swift has been developing faster, lower cost transfer products to enhance its existing rails. Swift GPI (Global Payment Innovation) is now conducting faster cross border payment trials, and is poised for rollout network wide.
Swift, which also provides the distributed switching platform for Australia’s NPP, is also testing its involvement in integrating the different real-time payments platforms between countries.
Thought too slow and expensive (today) for domestic payments, cryptocurrencies and distributed ledger technology is of interest for the future of cross border payments, although there is a long way to go. For example, Bitcoin transactions can occur at between 10-20 transactions a second (versus Visa at up to 56,000 per second), and crypto currencies are infamous for the volatility of their value in fiat.
However, the announcement in June 2019 of the Libra Foundation, with its bundled currency backed blockchain based “stablecoin”, and the Facebook developed Calibra payment wallet (planned to be the first wallet for Libra transactions) has generated significant excitement and debate. Whether or not is succeeds (or even permitted to launch by regulators), it raises the possibilities of western “bigtech” finally entering the payments (and broader financial services) category, and the possibility of a truly global currency that transcends fiat currencies and national borders – at the same time, reaching one of the world’s broadest social network audiences.
Will Libra run on new rails? Within the Calibra wallet this is likely, but Libra ultimately still needs to be funded from some other electronic source such as a bank account or card (even if unbanked users pass cash across the counter at “agent” locations). Indeed, it has been suggested that, to reach merchants for POS transactions, it may use the Visa and Mastercard rails.
There will be many legislative hurdles to overcome, and, in developed countries such as Australia with highly developed payments systems, there remains the question of what real problems are Libra and Calibra really trying to solve (maybe remittances?).
Use cases range from instant P2P payments, to real time payment of employee wages, superannuation, even to the ability to safely buy/sell a used car privately on the weekend without the need for cash transfers or bank cheques.
Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL)
With millions of customers in Australia, the USA and soon in the UK, “I’ll AfterPay it” is becoming a familiar expression. AfterPay, Zip Money, Humm and SplitIt have become particularly popular amongst millennials – Afterpay claims 69% of its users are 18-35 years old.
New way to pay, on new rails? No. Latitude and Flexigroup have been offering interest free payment plans for decades, and products such as Afterpay rely on debit and credit cards to make initial payments and subsequent repayments.
However, Afterpay and its cohort have tapped a rich vein of new business – millennials who are not migrating to credit cards, with a short-term low value instalment payment product, tuned initially for online purchases and delivered digitally. Merchants with a sufficient margin structure to absorb the 4-6% fee, see the additional sales as a boon in what is currently a tough retail environment. Add to this a group of BNPL businesses, those delivering similar products to small businesses, such as ProspaPay.
Conclusion – Consumer Payments in Australia
The adoption of electronic payments by consumers and businesses in Australia continues apace, pushing cheque and cash transactions (although not the amount of cash on issue) into a relatively steep decline. Consumer payments are dominated in volume by card-based transactions, but the format of these is starting to become “buried” under layers of “veneer” interfaces, many of which rely on card-on-file for their funding source.
To the consumer, these veneers look like “new ways to pay” and certainly deliver the more convenient and seamless experience that people seem to be seeking. But underneath, the funds are moving between the payer and payee accounts as they have always done.
The new rails provided by the NPP will not generate any new transactions in the market, but will take volume from existing systems. For the sake of efficiency and the economy, one hopes that the NPP will accelerate the decline in cash usage and lead to the termination of cheques. But it will also take volume from Direct Entry and card payments. Just as Swish has entered ecommerce and the point of sale market in Sweden, once the cost of NPP transactions reduces (as it should with volume growth) then one would expect it will also appear in the online and POS environments.
The increasing use of electronic payments in Australia should see the overall cost of payments as a percentage of GDP decline and the tax take through GST and income tax rise – both of which are beneficial for the country.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the view of Indue. The Initiatives Group has advised participants in the payments market since the 1990’s – including issuers, acquirers, third-party processors, technology providers and associations. The Initiatives Group has a strong relationship with Indue, and can help participants in the payments sector generate more value from their markets and customers. To find out how, please get in touch.
The NPP turns 1 this week (New Payments Platform)
New Payment Platform turns 1 this week
This week marks one year from the launch of the New Payments Platform (NPP) in Australia, and its first overlay service, Osko, which delivered the ability for payments to be made in real time.
With 75 banks now offering NPP, more than 2 million PayIDs registered and month-on-month growth around 20%1, it’s clear financial institutions are recognising the benefits this platform offers their customers. This week, the NPP turns 1!
“Indue is one of the 13 founding members of the NPP initiative, and we’re proud to see the NPP adopted among our diverse client base, including a mix of smaller banks supporting retail customers. It’s been an incredible year of innovation in payments and we would like to congratulate all involved in reaching this milestone anniversary.” (Indue CEO Derek Weatherley)
And our customers’ customers are enjoying the benefits. Just like how this Queensland Country Credit Union customer realised his dreams of owning a boat in an (almost) instant thanks to Real-time payments.
How Australians are using real-time payments 2
Osko by BPAY is the NPP’s first overlay service being used by consumers, businesses and fintechs. Since launching, Australians are enjoying the benefits of real-time payments and paying family and friends in under a minute, 24/7, even on weekends and public holidays.
“People transfer money at all times of the day – after dinner, on the weekends, at a footy match or cinema or even when buying something on Gumtree. Increasingly, they are expecting to access their money immediately. Most people will notice they have made an Osko payment when they get their payment receipt in online banking.” (Mark Williams, Chief Strategy Officer of BPAY Group.)
BPAY reports that Osko payments are not just limited to consumer to consumer transactions, with 30% of payments are to, or from, businesses and between businesses.
Mark adds: “Consumer expectations about how they pay and get paid are changing and we have been innovating to offer solutions that meet their needs. Osko Requests is in the pipeline, which will enable you to request a payment from within your online banking – making it much easier for someone to pay you back. We are also working to allow businesses to use Osko Requests and include documents such as invoices. So the NPP turns 1, is it too late to join the New Payments Platform?
The short answer is, of course, it’s not too late…yet. But savvy players in the industry recognise the importance of staying relevant in the face of digital disruption, and keeping the end-customer top of mind. If you are not providing the benefits of a simpler, faster and safe payment system to your customers, it’s likely a competitor or substitute will.
Find out More
Find out more about how Indue can help you participate in our new Real-time payments world.
1 Source Reserve Bank of Australia https://www.rba.gov.au/statistics/tables/
2 Source (OSKO by BPAY media release 13/2/19)
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