Banks and payments providers are stumbling toward a clear vision for cooperation and joint investment, with the industry most-informed insiders questioning the direction of the New Payments Platform and finding the strategic and innovation agenda "fragmented".BPAY Group, in a revealing submission to the RBA's Review of Retail Payments Regulation, explains that "implementation of Osko is only partially complete."The first, and so far only "overlay" on the NNP network, BPAY's Osko - now two years young - in its current form was only the first of three intended to provide a suite of simple services likely to appeal to a broad range of businesses and consumers."Future capabilities to enable Requests to Pay and to enable documents to be included with payments are yet to be rolled out," Mark Williams, the chief strategy officer of BPAY wrote in the submission.Williams said BPAY "continues to work with our member banks to secure committed funding and priority for the implementation of these services, though no committed timetable has yet been established. "We are also exploring the potential to fast-track implementation of these capabilities with a subset of member banks and selected high volume users such as government agencies."BPAY is looking for a rethink on facets of the business model of NPP Australia, owned and governed by essentially the same banks and faces as BPAY."While the recent NPP Access and Functionality Review and the NPPA Roadmap have outlined how to streamline and make more transparent the overlay application process, it may be appropriate to conduct a more thorough review of the overlay service model with a view to simplification and removing duplication and complexity," Williams said. "The NPP / Osko experience via the Strategic Review of Innovation also provides a good case study of systemic innovation in Australian payments. From the outset, there was role clarity between strategy direction from the RBA and implementation responsibility within the industry."Role clarity and delineation were key to industry support and the successful launch of both NPP and Osko. However, in the period since the launch of Osko and NPP, we have observed diminished alignment in terms of both strategic direction and implementation of systemic innovation. "While the introduction of NPP and Osko have been resource intensive for member banks, this emerging uncertainty on future enhancements highlights the challenge of ongoing systemic innovation. "From our perspective, strategic direction for systemic innovation has become increasingly fragmented."John Banfield, CEO of BPAY, elaborated on these themes yesterday in an interview with Banking Day."It's about how the industry collaborates to make good investment decisions."Banfield said the Real-Time Payments Committee, which steered the NPP from concept to a commercial joint venture, was the benchmark."Get a group like that set up and collectively make decisions best for the industry. Some structure like that needs to happen at the top level."The tangle of industry forums and zealous, fintech-driven visions may be a help or hindrance to the enlightened world of future payments on the minds of many."There are different roadmaps," Banfield said."How does the industry, naturally competitive, where