Banks may have to pick more senior staff to negotiate investment priorities on payments when they work through a new industry body.The Reserve Bank and the Australian Payments Clearing Association proposed "a new payments industry coordination body" yesterday, to be known as the Australian Payments Council. The RBA and APCA have been discussing the merits of the new council, at the RBA's urging, over the last year.The RBA said: "[The] proposed Council will be a senior-level body capable of taking a strategic perspective on issues of importance to the payments system, as well as engaging in a dialogue on those issues with the Payments System Board."The Reserve Bank said it will also establish a "User Consultation Group [that] will provide a more structured mechanism for users of the payments system to express views on payments system issues as an input to the Reserve Bank's policy formulation process."The RBA, however, appears to plan to represent user interests itself on the new council.APCA and the RBA propose that the Australian Payments Council will be made up of "diverse parties from within the payments industry, including financial institutions, payment schemes and other payment and service providers."While big banks typically nominate their head of payments products or payments policy, or equivalent, to the board of APCA, they might now be expected to send a more senior executive along to the Australian Payments Council. The Real-Time Payments Committee set up by APCA to develop a framework for what is now the New Payments Platform included a number of bank management committee members and only one member who was already a director of APCA.APCA already has a user consultative body in the Australian Payments Forum, chaired by Deloitte consultant Ian Harper. This body has a charter to "promote industry-based and non-regulatory initiatives in Australia as a means of enhancing competition in cards payments with minimal regulatory overlay."