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

• The Bank’s targeted assessment of Australia’s real-time gross settlement system – the
  Reserve Bank Information and Transfer System (RITS) – against the relevant international
  standards. The Board approved the assessment. The Board also considered an external review into the
  major outage of this system last October. The Bank will publish next week the targeted assessment and
  the external review, alongside its response.
• Pricing of New Payments Platform (NPP) services.
  The Bank will apply the same principles to the wholesale pricing of NPP transactions as it
  has applied to competing payment systems. In particular, interchange fees should not be set
  at a level that inhibits the efficiency and competitiveness of the payments system, and they
  should be published to provide transparency. The competitive implications of linking the
  pricing for one payment system with another payment system, and volume-based discounts,
  should be carefully considered.
• Competition in the debit card market. Currently, dual-network debit cards in Australia are issued
  with one network on the card having priority. As a result, contactless transactions automatically
  route to that network, unless the merchant has choice through least-cost routing. The Board is
  considering taking regulatory action to prohibit card schemes and issuers from setting a default
  routing network on dual-network debit cards. This would ensure that merchants can choose which
  network processes their debit transactions. The Bank will consult on the costs and benefits of such
  action.
• Improving the security of debit card transactions in the online environment. The tokenisation of
  dual-network debit cards has the potential to reduce the damage caused by cyber-attacks by reducing
  reliance on databases of card numbers. The Board discussed some impediments that are preventing the
  full security and efficiency benefits of tokenisation from being realised. The Bank will set some
  expectations for industry to address these impediments, with the aim of substantially reducing the
  reliance of merchants and payment service providers on databases of card numbers by the end of 2024.
  Following further consultation with industry, the Bank will publish detailed guidance on the steps
  that need to be taken and the deadlines for their completion.
• The results of the Bank’s 2022 Consumer Payments Survey. Members noted that the decline in the
  use of cash for consumer payments had accelerated following the pandemic. Consumers now use
  contactless card and mobile device payments for most of their in-person payments. At the same time,
  some members of the community continue to make the majority of their payments in cash. The main
  findings of the survey will be published in the June RBA Bulletin.