The merit of shifting, perhaps quickly, to a modern standard for payment messages and otherwise improving the content of the messages sent by banks with payments is a topic that attracted two varying views in submissions to the Reserve Bank of Australia's review of payments.These are two of the four key issues identified by the RBA in a June consultation paper. A couple of big banks took a conservative view.Westpac wrote that "we see global standards as being a valuable resource when considering innovation, but not something that should be mandated."National Australia Bank argued that re-engineering the direct entry system "would certainly be a costly exercise for industry participants. As such, we believe a potential solution could be using the existing 18 characters in DE as a referencing mechanism pointing to another data stream."This is the workaround used by the superannuation and funds management industries.Westpac also said that there are "many proprietary methods of addressing this business issue" and that "our view is that it is being dealt with competitively today". However, the bank did not address the pros and cons of sending remittance notices via email to accounts receivables clerks for manual reconciliation, which is the core of the Westpac offering to business customers.ANZ, the most internationally oriented of the Australian banks, endorsed use of the ISO 20022 messaging standard for new payments systems and "potentially for existing systems over time".Commonwealth Bank said it supported adoption of the new standard and said, "[We are] reviewing our own direct entry systems to cater for ISO 2002." Industry associations supported use of the global standard, including the Financial Services Council and the Australian Payments Conference.The FSC, many of whose members have agitated without success for such reform for years, wrote that "our preferred pathway is not to upgrade the direct entry system but to transition from direct entry to an ISO 20022 system."