Newcastle Permanent Building Society yesterday priced its first bond deal for the year, with a margin well inside a similar bond sold around the same time in early 2017. NPBS priced a new A$225 million five-year floating rate senior unsecured transaction. The mutual ADI is rated A3 by Moody's and BBB by S&P. The new notes, the joint leads said, have a spread of 140 basis points over the three-month swap rate. NPBS sold A$150 million of five-year floating rate, priced a spread of 165 bps over bank bills around a year ago. Joint lead managers were National Australia Bank and Westpac. Payments NZ has been developing open banking software and has given banks and Payments NZ members (payment providers and large retailers) until the end of this month to submit expressions of interest in taking part in a pilot programme, CEO Steve Wiggins told interest.co.nz. Wiggins said he expected the major banks, POLi, Paymark and auction site TradeMe to participate.