> […] we have essentially 4 big ones and they already are pretty cutting edge […]

The Big Four are not the cutting edge, it is a delusion. Out of four, only the Commonwealth Wank has transitioned onto a modern core banking platform for retail banking. Business accounts still run on the legacy core banking platform, if my understanding is current and accurate.

The remaining ones are as backward (from the technology POV) as they have always been. Westpac acquired St George Bank in 2008 trumpeting their core banking platform as the reason for the acquisition and the intention to transition onto it. To the best of my knowledge, that has not happened as of 2024, and Westpac contunues to use its own legacy core banking platform disjointly from that of St George's. Moreover, banking is not even integrated between the two even today, and the St George core banking has fell into a state of disrepair – EFT's can take a few days to reach the receipient's account depending on the receipient's bank.

The actual – pretty much only – innovator is Macquarie Bank that has invested a lot into revamping their banking platform from the ground up, plus neo-banks – newcomers to the banking market albeit niche ones.

The Big Four (or, most banks in general) loathe technology and IT as they see both as a liability, not a competitive advantage, due to tech not being their core business and due to being run by old farts with ossified brains. And that was the reason why they started rapidly losing millenials, Gen Z and other young customers to neobanks. It was a wake-up call for them.

> […] instant transfers are normalized […]

… and it has nothing to do with the Big Four. The Big Four, in fact, sabotaged instant payments for many years due to a lack of interest to advance the payment technology, and the instant payments in Australia only succeeded at the third (or at the fourth – I have lost the count) attempt after the Reserve Bank held the Big Four at a gunpoint and threatened them with severe penalties if they pull out again, as they had done every single time before. Instant payments in Australia are done via NPP/Osco, an independent company set up by the RBA, a BPAY subsidiary, and the Big Four as well as other local banks are mere users of it. None of the four control NPP/Osco payments, and that is a very good thing.

> If the NFC chips were opened up through regulation I have zero doubt Australian banks would just say "we support contactless with our first party app" […]

… and users would be left with the atrocious quality banking apps and with banks tracking the users all the way down into the customer's colons.

User tracking was the actual reason behind the spat between the Big Four and Apple – the former wanted to get a way into users' smartphones and all sorts of device and chip ID's – to track the user behaviour to which Apple said no. As a customer, Apple's stance suits me way more.

Of course, banks have found other ways to track the iPhone users courtesy of advances in the big data science, although the attempt has been somewhat hampered. The Big Four are the largest employers of data scientists and for a reason.

You can't be naive and look at the Big Four through the rose tinted glasses – they are in the business of making very big money and treat their customers as acquisition assets and cows to milk. Commonwealth Wank has been onselling the transaction information to Equifax (other than reporting the credit history), and Equifax has been onselling that transaction information to some pretty shady loan shark companies.