Payments System Board Update: November 2025 Meeting | Media Releases | RBA
Central bank: rba | Type: statement | Date: 2025-11-26

Media Release
Payments System Board Update: November 2025 Meeting
26 November 2025
At its meeting today, the Payments System Board discussed a number of issues, including:
Financial market infrastructure regulatory reforms and resolution planning.
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 The Board discussed stakeholder feedback on draft guidance on the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
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
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
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
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.
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.
For further details,
Project Mandala: shaping the future of cross-border payments compliance