Banks and other payments providers last year more than doubled their investment in NPP Australia - the corporate entity managing the rollout of the New Payments Platform.Financial accounts lodged with ASIC show that NPP Australia's issued capital more than doubled to A$116.7 million from $57.4 million in 2016 as the major banks and nine other investors took up 59,000 new preference shares.Apart from the four big banks, the mutual company's shareholders comprise ING Bank, Australian Settlements Limited, Cuscal, Indue, Macquarie, Bendigo and Adelaide Bank, Citigroup Australia, HSBC and the RBA.These and other disclosures in the company's 2017 accounts show that most of the costs incurred on the NPP project are occurring within the operations of the 13 members of the company.The NPP said earlier this year that the 13 members would collectively incur costs of around $1 billion to establish the new payments infrastructure.The real-time settlements service is now earmarked for public launch at the end of January next year, as several of the key participants were unable to meet the original schedule for an October launch.In a submission to the ACCC's authorisation process for the new platform in February this year, NPP Australia stated that it expected all deposit taking institutions would be able to offer viable services from last month."The coordinated delivery of the two parts of the NPP programme - platform and an immediately available payment service - is designed to enable all ADIs to be able to offer a viable service to consumers, businesses and governments from its launch in October 2017," the company told the competition regulator.Banking Day has been told by several payments providers that the delay is due to stalling tactics of two of the major banks who are alert to new competitive threats that will be accommodated by the new service.In an interview with Fairfax on 3 October, NPP Australia chief executive Adrian Lovney denied that the rollout was late, saying it would go live in November to "a limited number of people"."Our aim was to be live in the last quarter of 2017; we're on track to do that," Mr Lovney told Fairfax last month."When people come to work after Australia Day, the platform will commence rolling out to the public at large."This description of the launch schedule seems inconsistent with disclosures made to the ACCC in February.NPP Australia Ltd posted a net loss of $3.1 million in the 12 months to the end of June as the company ramped investment in software and infrastructure for the new payments service.The company told the ACCC in February that it did not expect its operations to be self-funding until October 2019, which raises the prospect of additional capital calls on current and future shareholders."From October 2019, NPPA's costs of operating the NPP are intended to be defrayed entirely by transaction fees," the company told the ACCC in February.