Australia has had a long-running practice of operating payment systems that are based on both bilateral business agreements between participants and the bilateral exchange of payments between those participants. This model presents a number of problems, not least the complexity and cost of adding a new entrant, which must establish similar arrangements with each existing participant.
Some of the significant changes we have seen in the payments system over the past few years have represented partial moves away from those bilateral arrangements. This includes the move to the industry community of interest network for clearing payments and the creation of eftpos Payments Australia Limited to centralise governance of the eftpos system.