But the Bank’s preferred approach is to identify areas where competition, efficiency or safety could be enhanced and then encourage industry to address those issues. A good example of this was the development of the New Payments Platform (NPP). The NPP is an open access infrastructure for fast payments in Australia. It went live earlier this year and is gradually ramping up.
It allows users of the payments system to send real-time payments with simple addressing 24/7. It also allows more complete information to be sent with payments. But this wasn’t a spontaneous creation of the industry. It was developed in response to a number of strategic objectives for the Australian payments system set by the Reserve Bank.