Citi, 86 400 launch PayID services

George Lekakis

Citi Australia and 86 400 have launched NPP-enabled services to customers, despite disruptions to rollouts of the new capability caused by the COVID-19 lockdown measures.

86 400 went live with full PayID functionality on Monday, while Citi completed its rollout last week.

Mid-tier Australian banks have been slow to connect to the New Payments Platform, with ME Bank, HSBC, UBank, Xinja and several Bendigo Bank subsidiary brands (Delphi and Adelaide) among the stragglers yet to offer PayID and thus access to NPP services.

Travis Tyler, the chief product officer at 86 400, said the bank was offering real time payments across all accounts - transactions, savings and home loans.

He said 86 400 would be looking to leverage NPP capability to provide other services to users of its mobile banking app.

“We see NPP capabilities having broader impacts for our customers but we’re not able to share our plans at this stage,” he said.

Tyler indicated some disappointment with other banks that still only offered limited NPP functionality to customers.

“Around ninety per cent of the payments sent out of 86 400 accounts are sent in real time, whereas only seventy per cent received by 86 400 accounts are in real time,” he said.

“This shows that not all industry participants have adopted real time payments across all channels and accounts.”

A Citi spokesperson said the rollout for PayID and Osko services for retail customers was completed and operational on May 25.

Citi’s PayID functionality is much richer than that offered by Westpac and ANZ because it is available across the full range of banking platforms offered by the bank.

“PayID is available via internet banking and mobile digital channels,” the spokesperson said.

“Citi customers with an eligible product can send and receive real time payments using PayID.”

While challenger banks are actively marketing PayID services to customers, major banks such as CBA appear to be hiding the new functionality from certain customer segments.

CBA recently launched PayID capability for internet customers but Banking Day can confirm that it gave its NetBank users no notice that the service had become available.

For the last two years the bank appears to have used the launch of the NPP to drive customer adoption of its mobile banking app.