Banks will have to report more often on payment processing incidents, as the Reserve Bank of Australia escalates its engagement with the issue.On Thursday, the Payments System Board said it will require banks to report more frequently on retail payments incidents.The RBA will make this aggregate data available as a benchmark to the industry. A version of this data may also be made public.The PSB said it expected that the statistics "will cover the frequency of incidents by severity, duration, payments channel, time of commencement and root cause. These statistics are aimed at identifying sources of vulnerability and measuring the impact on customers."The RBA's engagement with the issue follows more prominence being given to the loss of availability of retail payments through Eftpos, ATMs and internet banking in the age of social media.Blunders by banks in routine processing tasks that delay salary and benefit payments have also encouraged the RBA to monitor the issue.The PSB reiterated on Thursday that "until recently many participants have tended to underinvest in payments infrastructure.""As a result, there is widespread reliance on ageing core payments systems [that are] characterised by complexity and excessive interdependence between components. "Such investment has been resisted due to the substantial cost of generational change, as well as the difficulty in upgrading systems essential to day-to-day operations while minimising interruptions to critical services."