NPP sobers Sydney Sibos

Ian Rogers
NPP implemented 'for no return' says Westpac CEO Brian Hartzer
SWIFT - disrespected by their Australian banking customers over the last year - must be wishing like blazes this year's Sibos confab was taking place a hemisphere away from Sydney.  

The annual trade show of the international banking fraternity's predominant cross-border payments enterprise, viewed as too big to be useful by some global banks, is morphing into a networking event for those engrossed by fintech and startup hoopla.

In Melbourne next week at Intersekt - a follow on event deemed a "festival" by its promoters - the facts and fintech faultlines may be on show.

SWIFT's critical role in enabling the NPP's plumbing makes the topic one totem of SIbos 2018.

A parade of grandees of Australian banking have speaking slots at Sibos this week, many called upon to comment on the state of play of the New Payments Platform.

Well-conceived, badly needed and for the most part well-engineered at its core will be the guts of the commentary from a central bank governor, a D-SIB CEO and the chief of NPP Australia.  

Their accounts of the customer experience and the substance of the sector's transition to a real time payments culture in banking will be guarded, maybe defensive.

The bitter reality of the NPP's arrival in Australia is that it is by and large a flop and the Australian banking industry stands humiliated, hindered by legacy systems and institutionalised arrogance of the country's banking oligopoly.

It is now more than eight months since access was thrown open to banks' customers to register for a "PayID" and make an "Osko" payment, the branding equivalent of Swish in Sweden. That's if their bank were ready to join in and oddly a number of the 13 banks that collaborated on real time payments reform were not, and still aren't.

Early this month, Tony Richards, head of payments policy at the Reserve Bank of Australia, used a payments symposium in Chicago to gloss this reform.

PayID registrations now surpass two million with monthly volumes in excess of A$8 billion, Richards said.

The most recent RBA data on flows across the Fast Settlement Service show the average NPP payment pushing $1000 in September, roughly double the average value in the early months of Osko.

Brian Hartzer, managing director of Westpac, reflected on his bank's extended delay in linking its customers up with the NPP at a hearing of a parliamentary committee two weeks ago.

"Yes, it's taken us longer. We have always been committed to implementing the NPP.

"Our systems are complex. The fact that we have the legacy of the St George Bank acquisition [ten years ago] means we have quite a number of very old, complex systems.

"We have spent many hundreds of millions of dollars implementing this for no return, and we will do that. It's taken us longer, and I wish it hadn't, but we're doing it and we are now live."

Shayne Elliott, CEO of ANZ - Australian banking's other big bank slowcoach - has the task of making the welcome address at Sibos in Sydney this morning. Elliott's NPP narrative for ANZ is barely any more encouraging than that of Westpac.