IP Payments, which provides technology to facilitate A$12 billion worth of payments each year in Australia, has called on the Reserve Bank to be more explicit about exactly who might be able to connect to its proposed payments hub, warning that unless access to the hub is open to all payments service providers, banking competition in Australia will remain limited.Jamie Collins, a founder and managing director of Sydney-based IP Payments, said that at present to facilitate payments in Australia it was necessary to connect to each bank's payments hub. A centralised hub could significantly streamline payments processing, he said.Collins warned however that if Australia followed the UK model - where only 10 banks can use the Faster Payments hub - then the RBA would in effect be "limiting competition in Australia." Collins is currently in London to open the company's first international office.He said that UK customers who wanted to avail themselves of faster processing were obliged to sign up with one of the Faster Payments member banks.While he acknowledged that in its discussion paper the RBA "didn't say we couldn't [link to the proposed Australian payments hub], it didn't say we could.""We would like more certainty," said Collins.The RBA has at this stage only sketched out what the Australian payments hub might look like and has called for industry comment on those proposals before the end of August. As far as hub access is concerned it has suggested that there could be "open access for financial institutions and payment service providers."He said the system could be "potentially accessible to consumer and business customers of all authorised deposit-taking institutions offering retail transaction banking."Australia is IP Payments' core market. It has 3500 customers in Australia and New Zealand and provides the technology underpinning some of the payments offerings of the big four banks.The company has this week kicked off international expansion plans. Its newly opened London office will offer payment gateway processing services, storage of credit card details in PCI (Payment Card Industry standard) secure data centres and the automation of the accounts receivable process including billing, payments and reconciliation to European businesses.Collins claims the services can "accelerate cashflow" by speeding both invoicing and debt collection.He said that initially all European transactions would be routed through two data centres in Australia, but that the company might open a data centre in Europe in the future. He said the company also hoped to open offices in Hong Kong and Singapore within 18 months to two years.