Robert Milliner wears many hats in Australian payments stakes
Australian Payments Council chair Robert Milliner has been appointed as the independent convener of a special industry committee examining NPP Australia’s proposed merger with BPay and Eftpos.
Details of the committee’s mandate are contained in the NPP Australia’s 2020 annual report that was lodged with ASIC last week.
NPP directors disclosed that the committee would operate within a NPP-owned subsidiary known as Industry Administration Committee Pty Ltd (ICA).
The purpose of ICA is to establish a governance framework for “making non-binding recommendations” on the merits of merging NPP Australia’s operations with the two domestic payments schemes.
Milliner, a respected businessman and former chief executive partner of Mallesons Stephens Jacques (now King & Wood Mallesons) is overseeing the deliberations of the industry committee that NPP Australia’s directors say will take into account the respective interests of shareholders of the merger candidates, industry stakeholders and “the public interest”.
“ICA has been established as a special purpose contracting entity for the purposes of coordinating this activity,” NPP Australia revealed in the annual report.
“In terms of its practical activities, ICA will collect contributions from shareholders of industry-owned payments companies who have elected to participate in these discussions, enter into contracts with entities providing services to the industry committee, and pay associated invoices, in accordance with the directions of the industry committee.”
NPP Australia did not clarify in the annual report whether consumer groups had been invited to participate in the industry committee.
The four major banks collectively hold a controlling interest in the three domestic payments businesses, although the Reserve Bank and a string of other banks are also shareholders of NPP Australia.
National retailers Coles and Woolworths, along with a handful of payments providers such as PayPal, also hold minority stakes in Eftpos.
The Australian payments system appears to be on the cusp of root and branch reform partly driven by the advent of the New Payments Platform two years ago.
Last week the federal government appointed King & Wood Mallesons partner Scott Farrell to lead a Treasury inquiry into governance of regulation in the payments system.
According to the inquiry’s terms of reference published on Treasury’s website last week, Farrell - a longstanding legal adviser to NPP Australia - has been asked to assess the “pace and manner in which the New Payments Platform was being rolled out and enhanced by industry”.
In 2018 the Productivity Commission panned the governance arrangements of the NPP, arguing that they could hinder the entry of new competitors to the major banks in the payments market.
Banking Day yesterday sought comment from Farrell on whether his role leading the Treasury inquiry might appear a conflict of interest given that NPP Australia has been a longstanding client of King & Wood Mallesons’ Sydney fintech practice.