Some credit unions and major banks are ready to go ahead and jump onto the New Payments "platform", ahead of its start date of "after Australia Day". Westpac won't be one of them. "All the banks are all moving together on this," Westpac Group's chief executive Brian Hartzer said yesterday. While Hartzer conceded that it's a great development for customers, giving them the opportunity to move money more rapidly, Westpac seems to be taking the line that it could move too rapidly for them to keep up and a more modern architecture will enable new services to be created. "The system goes live in February and will be rolled out across different segments of the bank next year. There are a few issues that need to be sorted out around risk management, in particular.  If money is moving really quickly, then it's gone. We're working on details about how customers' money is protected." A recovery in the New Zealand dairy sector has helped Westpac's NZ arm post a 9.5 per cent rise in annual cash earning (up to NZ$970 million) despite its income remaining essentially flat. The result was thanks to a NZ$135 million improvement in impairments. Operating expenses were up slightly to NZ$963 million, and net profit up 10.7 per cent to NZ$1.36 billion. The New Zealand Debt Management Office postponed the launch of a 2029 bond to 2018, saying the government was flush with cash and it wanted to give the market a chance to evaluate any new information that may be in the half-year fiscal update in mid-December.