Long-serving Cuscal executive Adrian Lovney has been appointed inaugural chief executive of NPP Australia Ltd, which is building the New Payments Platform.Lovney is currently general manager of product and service at Cuscal. In that position he has led the organisation's work with NPP.Previously he was Cuscal's general manager of strategy and communication. The NPP was launched in 2013 with the task of developing national infrastructure that would allow for data-rich, real-time payments. It will go live next year.Payment functions will operate outside banking hours. Payments will include a lot more remittance information than is currently permitted and the system will allow for payments to non-bank account destinations, such as mobile phone numbers.The NPP is building the core infrastructure, leaving the development of service overlays to the market.The service has passed a few milestones in recent months. In November bill payments provider Bpay won the tender to supply the first NPP overlay service.And last month HSBC Bank Australia announced that it had joined NPP Ltd as a shareholder - the first additional shareholder to join the project's 12 founding members.NPP Australia chair Paul Lahiff said in a media release that Lovney was well credentialled to lead the project, having experience in running large-scale transition projects.Cuscal started life as a service provider for credit unions but in recent years has become a more broadly based payment service provider.Lovney will join NPP Australia in September.