RBA Governor Lays Out the Future of Payments in Australia

Philip Lowe, Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA), spoke recently at a conference about the future of payments in Australia. He said that the direction of change was ‘pretty clear’.

The five changes he highlighted were:

• The declining use of banknotes and the increasing use of electronic forms of payment.

• The greater use of digital wallets.

• The growing involvement of the ‘big techs’ in payments.

• The increasing specialisation within the payments value chain and the emergence of new business models.

• The growing community and political interest in the security, reliability and cost of payments.

ATM withdrawals over the last six months are 30% down in Australia, a significant acceleration of a long-term trend. There has been a switch from credit cards to debit cards and strong growth in Account-to-Account (A2A) payments, predominantly using Australia’s New Payments Platform (NPP).