Momentum builds — slowly — in Australian real time payments
Depending upon your perspective, real time payments in Australia are either well down the runway or still just taxiing to takeoff.
The New Payments Platform (NPP), Australia’s relatively new real-time payments system, is finally gaining momentum. But challenges remain if it is to replace the decades-old direct entry system by the Reserve Bank’s target of 2030.
According to a new index from payments facilitator Zepto, the NPP processed 1.6 billion transactions valued at $1.99 trillion in 2024 — a 23% year-on-year increase in transaction value.
Zepto’s own PayTo platform delivered 800,409 settled payments between October 2023 and April 2025, totalling $511.71 million, with a payment conversion rate of 93.13% and a median settlement time under five seconds.
PayTo is the NPP’s real-time service designed to largely replace the current batch-based direct debit system known as BECS.
