The Payments System Board has given a glowing assessment of the retail payment system’s performance during the global pandemic, despite recurring outage problems at two of the country’s major banks.

“Members observed that the retail payments system had again coped well with the recurrence of lockdowns in a number of states and territories and their impact on operational arrangements in financial institutions,” the PSB said after its August meeting on Friday.

“They welcomed the use of the New Payments Platform by Services Australia and the Bank's Banking Department to make timely COVID Disaster Payments, including on weekends.

“The ability to make these real-time payments is a welcome benefit of the significant investment by the Bank and the payments industry in Australia's fast payments system.”

While no-one disputes the utility of real time services when they’re available, the PSB appears to have overlooked that the NPP’s services are offered through the platforms of retail banks, several of which are known to be outage-prone.

The outages that have plagued Commonwealth Bank’s digital platforms this year left millions of customers with limited or no access to money in their accounts.

At least four of those outages were protracted and resulted in mobile banking customers being marooned at supermarkets and other retail outlets with no means of paying for goods.

Sporadic service failures have persisted throughout the most recent lockdowns in NSW and Victoria, according to the Down Detector website and CBA’s social media pages.

Down Detector has archived three outages for the bank’s digital platforms so far in August, bringing the year-to-date total to 32 incidents.

Westpac’s digital customers have also been left high and dry in recent months following a string of service disruptions, including a protracted incident on 5 July.

And, of course, the systemic perils of outsourcing in the payments industry were underlined on 17 June when a meltdown of the Akamai content delivery system paralysed online banking at CBA, Westpac and ANZ for many hours.

So, how is the PSB able to conclude that the retail payments system has “coped well” this year?

Seems incredible.