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Australia’s new real-time banking payments platform

itnews.com.au

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Re: Australia’s new real-time banking payments platform

#101

Post by nickonline »

sumedh wrote: post #96
dav43 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A big reason for this system is tax. The thought being if all payments in Australia are seamless and instant AND recorded, there will be no need for cash. Business will no longer be able to hide revenue. They will make up this spend very quickly.

> there will be no need for cash. There will always be need for cash, business who want to pay employees cash in hand and employees/immigrants who are desperate for jobs will accept less than minimum wage in cash

neither of these are acceptable government business reasons to keep cash

Re: Australia’s new real-time banking payments platform

#102

Post by kuschku »

therealmarv wrote: post #98
kuschku wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Germany, and I'm using online banking with the Commerzbank (normal account), Postbank (savings) and N26 (CC). I've done hundreds of transfers, sent and received. In fact, frequently I transfer money to ny parents, or they to any of my accounts (they use commerzbank or postbank), and usually within of 10 minutes my phone gives me a push notification that the transaction has completed and the money is there.

What you are describing are transfers in the same bank. This are totally different than doing real cross border SEPA transfers. I'm only describing my experience with 4 countries (Lithuania, Cyprus, UK, Germany: all EU / EEA)

I'm describing transfers Commerzbank->N26, Postbank->Commerzbank, and then, for my server payments, transactions Commerzbank->whatever French bank Scaleway/Online.net uses.

Re: Australia’s new real-time banking payments platform

#103

Post by therealmarv »

therealmarv wrote: post #98
kuschku wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Germany, and I'm using online banking with the Commerzbank (normal account), Postbank (savings) and N26 (CC). I've done hundreds of transfers, sent and received. In fact, frequently I transfer money to ny parents, or they to any of my accounts (they use commerzbank or postbank), and usually within of 10 minutes my phone gives me a push notification that the transaction has completed and the money is there.

What you are describing are transfers in the same bank. This are totally different than doing real cross border SEPA transfers. I'm only describing my experience with 4 countries (Lithuania, Cyprus, UK, Germany: all EU / EEA)

@kuschku: Well banking system from German and French banks are probably more advanced and faster. It does not work everywhere in EU that way.

Re: Australia’s new real-time banking payments platform

#104

Post by jermaustin1 »

theBobBob wrote: post #51
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too much of that and it becomes taxable "income" in less advanced Democracies.

Really? Most of them were just various ways of splitting or repaying bills. The loan I will admit might be in a somewhat legally grey area.

Traditionally only if you are charging an interest rate. There are a few rules in the US around lending money to non-family and expecting it to be paid back.

IANAL, but I lend a lot of money, and this is what I've been told:

If you give without the expectation it is typically just cash swapping hands in both directions. If you give money to a non family member and expect payments (with or without interest) OR to a family member and expect more than a rate that is defined at the IRS (<1%, IIRC), then the income is taxable. How they tax you on a no-interest loan to a non-family member, I have no idea.

Re: Australia’s new real-time banking payments platform

#105

Post by nickonline »

TekMol wrote: post #47

They spent one billion Australian Dollars to implement a national system for instant payments and have yet to convince banks to adopt it? And it forces users to hand out their phone number or email to strangers? Given that, Bitcoins $140B market cap does not seem too unreasonable. As it is international and gives users better privacy controls.

The banks spent $1B dollars,

What are you saying they've not adopted.

Re: Australia’s new real-time banking payments platform

#106

Post by fat-chunk »

mstibbard wrote: post #93
noneeeed wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When was that? I'm in the UK and I'm curious what I'm missing out on. I have mobile banking for everything, I can do almost instant (sub 30s) transfers between banks, we have contactless payment cards and Apple/Android pay support is ubiquitous, and we can do person to person transfers using a phone number (the horribly named "PayM"). What are we missing out on here that we should be pushing our banks for? I do see t…

This is not exhaustive but it is what comes to mind. * Paper still required for most proof of identity/address etc. Particularly annoying almost all providers are pushing customers to move to online statements but then opening any new accounts still require paper * Wet signatures still considered king/stronger than other forms of identification. This has caused me issues as I barely ever need to sign and hence my sig…

I've been with monzo for close to a year now, and have been with their current account for the last couple of months, and in my opinion it solves pretty much every issue you have listed above. I couldn't go back.

Re: Australia’s new real-time banking payments platform

#107

Post by gonzo41 »

qzervaas wrote: post #10

The two banks I’ve checked only allow you to use your mobile phone number or email address as your PayID (CBA and ING). When paying somebody, when you enter a recipient’s PayID, the bank confirms by showing the recipient account holder name. So in effect, they’ve just implemented a nationwide number-to-name lookup system. Separate to this, these two banks are pushing it hard. It feels like a land grab, since a single…

CBA handles 50% of Australian Banking each day. They already have the land!

Re: Australia’s new real-time banking payments platform

#108

Post by therealmarv »

mattmanser wrote: post #100
therealmarv wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you maybe never lived in other countries in the EU. It takes more than 24 hours. Client gives order to his bank in country A on Monday evening, bank will execute this order next morning because bank is closed. Money will be transferred from bank A to bank B within this 24 hours. Client b sees on mid day on day 3 or even 4, that's Wednesday (or Thursday) his money on his bank account. Don't tell me about the law... it…

This is the problem about talking about the EU like it's one country, it's not. As another commentator pointed out, the UK it's instant, now it turns out in Germany it's also instant. That's 150 million EU citizens. You shouldn't make assumptions that whatever happens in your country, it happens for the rest of the EU. Here's Holland's transfer times: https://hoeveelkrijgjij.nl/blog/belastingen/hoe-lang-duurt-g... Th…

Good comment! My experience is with several bank transfers between this 4 countries: Lithuania, Cyprus, UK, Germany (all EU / EEA). Don't assume because it works in Germany and France it works everywhere that way!

Re: Australia’s new real-time banking payments platform

#109

Post by jacques_chester »

mstibbard wrote: post #93
noneeeed wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When was that? I'm in the UK and I'm curious what I'm missing out on. I have mobile banking for everything, I can do almost instant (sub 30s) transfers between banks, we have contactless payment cards and Apple/Android pay support is ubiquitous, and we can do person to person transfers using a phone number (the horribly named "PayM"). What are we missing out on here that we should be pushing our banks for? I do see t…

This is not exhaustive but it is what comes to mind. * Paper still required for most proof of identity/address etc. Particularly annoying almost all providers are pushing customers to move to online statements but then opening any new accounts still require paper * Wet signatures still considered king/stronger than other forms of identification. This has caused me issues as I barely ever need to sign and hence my sig…

Some particular notes:

> Paper still required for most proof of identity/address etc.

Government requirement, the "100 point test". Introduced to cut down on money laundering. It also cuts down on a lot of other crimes. In Australia I used my credit cards for any old thing. In the US if I sneeze too loudly the bank freezes it and asks me to confirm the last dozen transactions.

> Wet signatures still considered king/stronger than other forms of identification. This has caused me issues as I barely ever need to sign and hence my signature is never consistent!

I never had this experience. PIN or ID for identity, signature for legal effect. Meanwhile in the US I sign for everything.

> Having to specify that you want a contactless debit/credit card - do people really not want contactless cards?

This might be specific to your bank. They marketed contactless heavily when it came, right after heavily marketing chip-and-PIN. Might have been an own-goal.

I'm told, anecdotally, that a lot of the UK's banking modernisation in the 90s was done by Australians who participated in Australia's banking modernisation in the 80s. Might not be true, but it sounds cool, so I'm going with it.

Re: Australia’s new real-time banking payments platform

#110

Post by Intermernet »

codebolt wrote: post #14
threeseed wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably collectively. And has someone who has worked for Australian banks it is probably on the cheap side. Many of the core systems that needed upgrading are old and there isn't necessarily the people around who worked on them. And so there are a lot of costs that go into upgrading.

It just seems absurd that it should be so complicated and expensive to build a system which on a basic level is just about maintaining a large table of numbers (the ledger of bank account balances) and doing simple arithmetic on it. And I say this as someone who develops banking systems for a living. I think/hope the banking and financial sector in the future will be much more lean and optimized, both in terms of sys…

Apparently a lot of the cost and delay was making sure that the regulatory requirements for bank transfers were met. These are handled by APCA (Australian Payments Clearing Association), which is now Australian Payments Network Limited (AusPayNet)[0]. These transfers have traditionally been done over the Bulk Electronic Clearing System (BECS). BECS is a dinosaur and I have a feeling that once you achieved agreement between the members of AusPayNet (about 120 members), met all regulations, tested the new system for reliability, performance and conformance, tested the new system for interoperability with BECS, made sure it didn't have any gaping holes that allowed fraud to take place and, finally, paid some serious money to all of the consultants and 3rd parties involved in the rollout, you'd easily approach the billion dollar mark.

This project has been underway for about 6 years now. Think of it as ~$166MM per year for the rollout. I agree that it would be nice if the Australian financial sector were lean and optimized in the future, but I don't hold out that much hope to be honest, despite other countries managing to achieve this.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Payments_Network

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