The fundamental importance of Commonwealth Bank's A$1.1 billion core systems revamp, which offers a real-time banking platform, was stressed repeatedly at yesterday's launch of the Kaching iPhone app. However, real-time P2P (person-to-person) payments will only be available to a limited cohort of Kaching users.Australia's broader banking system will continue to see batch-computing throttle inter-bank processing speeds.Only when a mobile-to-mobile payment is made from one Commonwealth customer with a Kaching account to another Commonwealth customer with a Kaching account will the transaction be conducted in real time. For most other forms of payment the batch process takes over.So if, for example, a Kaching user sends an email or a Facebook message to make a payment, that payment will be sent to a collection site, which the recipient will need to log in to using a special code and then input their banking details, the transaction will then complete as a normal inter-bank batch process.However, Kaching users who also opt to buy a near-field communication cover for their iPhone will be able to use the PayPass network to buy things for up to $100 a pop - and these transactions will be executed in real time according to the bank.Although CBA will remain limited in terms of its ability to complete all transactions in real time because of inter-bank legacy systems, CIO Michael Harte stressed that the new core system "gives us the ability to launch apps faster".This was important, according to David Lindberg, CBA's executive general manager for credit cards, payments and retail strategy. He said it was the bank's "ambition to own mobile and NFC payments in this market" and the bank had committed to three-monthly innovation cycles in this area.