RBA Payments System Board Update: Nov 2025 Meeting

At its meeting today, the Payments System Board discussed a number of issues, including:

• Financial market infrastructure regulatory reforms and resolution planning. The Board welcomed progress in operationalising powers to prevent or resolve a crisis at an Australian clearing and settlement facility. The Board discussed stakeholder feedback on draft guidance on the RBA's crisis resolution powers. The guidance is expected to be published in December 2025.
• Review of Merchant Card Payment Costs and Surcharging. Members discussed the stakeholder feedback and evidence received in response to the Consultation Paper published in July. In particular, the Board considered the relative merits of the various options on payment card surcharging. Members also discussed the extent to which interchange caps should be reduced, and whether commercial credit cards should attract higher interchange caps than consumer credit cards. Members noted feedback that there is a risk that a portion of the proposed interchange reductions would not be passed through to merchants in the short term without further regulatory intervention. As such, members discussed various options to promote competition and transparency in the acquiring market. After giving due consideration to the substantial body of information received during the consultation, the Board expects to publish its conclusions and an implementation timeline for any regulatory action by March 2026. The Board agreed that it was not in the public interest to further delay this review given the importance of the reforms being considered.
• Payment Systems (Regulation) Act 1998: Members welcomed the recent amendments to the PSRA. There will be a public consultation in mid 2026 on the Board's regulatory priorities, taking into account these amendments, technology development and innovation in the payments industry, and payments regulatory issues that extend beyond the Review of Merchant Card Payment Costs and Surcharging. The consultation would include efficiency, competitiveness and safety issues with mobile wallets, three party schemes, buy-now-pay-later providers and e-commerce platforms.
• Assessment of the New Payments Platform. The Board reviewed the RBA's 2025 assessment of the New Payments Platform (NPP) under the Prominent Payment Systems oversight regime. Efforts to promote effective governance and risk management remain a priority in light of industry's intended migration of account-to-account payments to the NPP in the medium term.
• The safety and resilience of Australia's real-time gross settlement system. The Board received an update on progress against the recommendations from the March 2024 Assessment of the Reserve Bank Information and Transfer System (RITS). The update covered initiatives to strengthen the operational reliability of the RITS ecosystem and key areas of oversight focus including change management and cyber resilience. The Board acknowledged the continued progress and noted that the forthcoming full assessment in June 2026 will provide a comprehensive view of RITS's observance of the Principles for Financial Market Infrastructures.
• Advanced Encryption Standard (AES).The Board received an update on industry progress to enable the transition to AES for card payments in Australia. Members reiterated their strong support for industry efforts to ensure encryption standards continue to meet the high safety standards for card payments expected by the Australian public. The Board expects industry to progress migration with sufficient urgency to enable the readiness of AES for use by December 2030. The Board agreed to consult on using the RBA's standard-setting powers under the PSRA to support the migration.
• The annual review of compliance with card payments regulation. Members reviewed the compliance of card issuers and acquirers, and the designated card schemes, with the RBA's interchange and surcharging standards and access regimes in 2024/25. There was assessed to be a high level of compliance with the RBA's regulations.
• Enhancing cross-border payments. Members discussed Australia's progress towards achieving cheaper, faster, more transparent and more accessible cross-border payments under the G20 Roadmap. The Board recognised the payments industry's ongoing efforts to transition to richer ISO 20022 payments messaging and adopt internationally harmonised requirements in the High Value Clearing System and the NPP by the end of 2027. It also observed growing use of the NPP's International Payments Service, which enables incoming cross-border payments to be processed on a 24/7 basis. The Board will continue to monitor the industry's implementation of these initiatives.

  The RBA is currently participating in the second phase of the Bank for International Settlement's Project Mandala, which is investigating the automation of cross-border compliance processes.¹ The RBA will also be examining options for enhancing wholesale cross-border payments in 2026, including through upgrades to RITS and further research on digital money innovations.