The 30 million low value electronic payments that Australians make each day are being processed through a common payment network for the first time. Fourteen financial institutions have migrated from an old network of 90 bilateral links to the new Community of Interest Network (COIN) - an Internet Protocol cloud provided by Telstra.The development of COIN was a two-year project co-ordinated by the Australian Payments Clearing Association. APCA announced yesterday that all participating institutions are now using it.COIN covers Bpay, ATMs, eftpos, and direct debits. It does not cover Visa and MasterCard scheme payments, and it does not cover PayPal transactions.APCA chief executive Chris Hamilton said: "Replacing multiple links between individual participants with a single connection reduces the cost of establishing and maintaining physical connections, and enables significantly faster file transfers."COIN has had a long gestation. The idea was first outlined in an APCA paper published in 2008."The common payments network provides the industry with an efficient and robust communications platform to support the payment networks of the future," Hamilton said.However, the task of streamlining and integrating the payments system is not over yet. APCA and the Reserve Bank want the industry to adopt a messaging standard called ISO 20022 as the protocol for passing traffic between COIN and SWIFT, the network used for international and high value payments.There have been disagreements about the adoption of ISO 20022. The Reserve Bank published a consultation paper on the adoption of the messaging standard in June last year and, in response, Westpac and National Australia Bank baulked."We see global standards as being a valuable resource when considering innovation but not something that should be mandated," wrote Westpac.NAB argued that re-engineering the direct entry system "would certainly be a costly exercise for industry participants."ANZ and Commonwealth Bank endorsed the use of ISO 20022.Hamilton said: "At this stage nothing is binding. We are saying this standard is going to be an international framework for payments in the future and we want people to look at it."