ANZ management is "supportive" of Reserve Bank of Australia goals for reform of the payments system in Australia, but is not making any particular plans to adapt its own investment priorities at present.
Asked at Friday's media briefing on ANZ's technology strategy for a response to the RBA's
consultation paper on innovation, released last month, Graham Hodges, the bank's deputy chief executive, said that "we're supportive of the Reserve Bank's broad approach to augment the payment system.
"It's a question of when that will be delivered …. My sense is there is a bit of water to go under the bridge in terms of the … sort of platforms [that] go forward. "
ANZ's chief information officer, Anne Weatherston, had earlier pointed to ANZ's little-publicised capability to make real-time payments, a feature available at the bank for years, though of use only to customers making a payment to another ANZ bank account.
Hodges said of suggestions that the bank extend this to real-time payments to accounts with other banks, and with richer information on the payment, that, "from a business perspective, you've got to look at what's important from a customer requirement or customer perspective.
"If that became a priority for customers, then clearly, the organisation would focus on it, but in many cases, it's not particularly.
"It's about the customer need …. From a business perspective, what do we need to compete and win in the marketplace, and that comes back to what's important from a customer point of view.
"If you don't keep your focus on that, you can invest in all sorts of things which might look good, but actually they don't deliver real value in the bottom line sense, in driving new business and actually improving the way the group performs."
Asked by several reporters for comments on the fate of Mambo, the big banks' project to develop an electronic addressing system to speed up payments, Hodges inaccurately said that NAB had pulled funding for the project. NAB have, for now, said they will continue to wear their share of funding though they will no longer undertake any development work.
Speaking more widely on
Mambo, Hodges said of the project's costs: "[these are] I think, the issue that sort of more comes to the fore.
"It's one [an issue] where the industry will have something in place, I don't think it's not going to happen, I think something will happen there, it's a question of how effectively it will be delivered, and at what cost I think is more the issue.
"No one's happy with a project that takes longer than it should or costs more than it should, would be my view at a bank level."