Momentum is building toward the transition to real-time payments and Australia’s payments future. In 2024, 1.6 billion transactions flowed through the NPP, totalling $1.99 trillion—a 23% increase from 2023 - demonstrating growing adoption of real-time payments.  

In today’s fast-paced economy, fast, efficient payments are essential. Government, businesses and consumers all benefit from always-available, faster payments that are data-rich to thrive in the digital economy. These capabilities are critical for Australia’s productivity and competitiveness. The NPP was built to meet these needs and evolve for the future, currently processing more than 30% of Australia's account-to-account payments.  

With AusPayNet setting 2030 as the target to retire Australia’s legacy direct entry payments infrastructure, the Bulk Electronic Clearing System (BECS), AP+ is working closely with industry to support the movement of the remaining 70% of account-to-account payment volume to the NPP.  

Since early 2024, AP+ has mobilised an extensive program of work to ensure the NPP has the capability, capacity, reach and resilience to easily handle large volumes of transactions in real time.

NPP fast facts

Source: AP+ 31 March 2025 and RBA Payments data.

In addition to the ongoing capability and product enhancements, AP+ is focused on growing awareness of the NPP and its benefits, along with providing the education and mobilisation needed by users of BECS across government, industry and businesses to support the transition. 

Bringing the industry together toward Australia’s payments future  

To provide the necessary oversight and governance for this significant industry initiative, AP+ recently established the Move to NPP Steering Committee, led by independent Chair, Geoff Summerhayes. The Committee will play a key role in guiding the delivery of the Move to NPP program, focusing on readiness and the broader activities required for a smooth and well-managed industry transition.  

AP+ also welcomes the Reserve Bank of Australia’s (RBA) recent risk assessment on the planned decommissioning of BECS. The report underscores AP+’s investment in the NPP and progress made over the last year in delivering the next generation of account-to-account payments.  
 
For more details on the Move to NPP Steering Committee and the RBA risk assessment, visit our website.  

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AP+ roadmap initiatives to support the move to NPP 

The AP+ roadmap initiatives outlines the key requirements and initiatives to ensure the NPP has the required capability, capacity, reach and resilience to easily handle large volumes of transactions.  

In this update, we're sharing some key developments, including: 

1. 1. Enhancements to NPP processes and payment messaging 

2. 2. Upgrading NPP’s ISO 20022 messaging for global alignment  

3. 3. Designing a service to more efficiently process large volumes of bulk payments across the platform  

4. 4. Ensuring sufficient capacity for future NPP payment growth  

5. 5. Connecting all relevant accounts to send and receive NPP payments  

6. 6. Establishing a contingency framework for NPP ahead of the BECS decommissioning date 

AP+ roadmap: move to NPP initiatives

1. Enhancements to NPP processes and payment messaging

We’ve been in discussion with industry and a range of stakeholders to identify enhancements to NPP processes and payment messaging that would add value for financial institutions, digital service providers and end users. The proposed enhancements will support a consistent industry wide approach for both payers and payee experiences and further enhance fraud screening. 

Some of these enhancements have been confirmed for delivery as part of the NPP annual release cycle at the end of 2026.

These include: 

• Payday super identifiers: Additional data elements are being introduced to support the processing of superannuation payments in light of proposed Payday super legislation, including payroll / qualifying earnings date and the identification of a payment as a refund.
• Enhanced PayTo messaging: Ensuring additional information is passed in the payment message to the receiving bank to better support fraud screening, including identifying the ultimate creditor and categorisation of merchants.

AP+ continues to consult with industry and stakeholders on further proposed enhancements including:

• Batch identifiers: Introducing the use of data fields within the NPP payment message to group transactions together, making it easier to identify individual payments originating from a batch file.
• Process to support bulk returns: Developing a process that supports Participants being able to deal with a large number of returns that relate to one bulk file which will be important in the adoption of the NPP for large bulk files. 
• Developing a standard payment instruction format: At present, an ABA file or some form of alternative proprietary payment instruction format is used by digital service providers and other end users for processing transactions through BECS. These file formats have been designed around the BECS system and are limited to the specific features of a BECS payment.

To help with integration and reduce bespoke arrangements, AP+ is working with Participants and the industry to develop a standard payment instruction format for NPP payments to replace these existing file formats. This will help facilitate Participants, payment service providers and the wider ecosystem in building payment offerings to receive or distribute transactions that deliver a standard and consistent experience for both payers and payees. ​ 

In our discussions with the DSPANZ payments working group in particular, we’ve heard that this format would be of significant value.

Our intent is to further consult with industry and end users on these proposed enhancements in the coming months.  

2. Upgrading NPP’s ISO 20022 messaging for global alignment

The NPP’s payment messaging framework is built on ISO 20022, the global standard for payments information exchange. Since its initial design in 2014, the version used by the NPP has remained largely unchanged, while significant enhancements have been made to the ISO standard globally. 

To stay aligned with international developments and other ISO 20022-based systems in Australia, the NPP will be upgraded to a more recent version, with a target delivery date of December 2026. The upgrade will:

• Support the use of new data elements which will enable greater functionality and efficiency, including facilitating reduced manual handling and greater capacity to deal with errors and security risks.
• Improve compatibility with global financial systems, enabling smoother international transactions.

The version upgrade will allow for NPP message harmonisation that is aligned with global initiatives, including the G20 commitments plus domestic initiatives like proposed Payday Super legislation. 

3. Designing a service to more efficiently process large volumes of bulk payments 

The NPP was designed to process single payments line-by-line rather than batching a number of payments together, as occurs on BECS today. This approach was taken to facilitate real-time processing and support the efficiencies that can be delivered from the ability to isolate individual payment issues.  

Businesses migrating bulk payments to the NPP have options available:   

1. 1. Many bulk files contain only a small number of payments that can be ‘debulked’ by banks and processed as single NPP payments.  

2. 2. The shift to APIs and more continuous payment processing means that many bulk files can transition to the NPP using this more modern method. 

Both approaches are being used today as businesses start to migrate their payments to the NPP.  

For those bulk payments for which the above solutions are not ideal, AP+ has received industry feedback that a standard approach to processing these bulk payments across the platform would help facilitate migration. Over the past 9 months, AP+ has consulted and collaborated with industry to determine how to best solve for processing large volumes of bulk payments on the NPP.  

At the end of 2024, industry agreed that there was merit in proceeding to detailed design to further elaborate on the development of a new business service which would enable multiple transactions to be contained within a single payment message (‘multi-credit transfer’ message) and processed across the platform.  

Detailed design work will occur during 2025 and will include engagement and consultation with a range of end users and stakeholders as part of that process. 

4. Ensuring sufficient capacity for future NPP payment growth   

As payments shift to the NPP, AP+ has planned capacity uplifts, backed by detailed volumetric modelling, to support higher transaction volumes and ensure seamless processing. 

AP+ completed an initial NPP capacity uplift in December 2023, with the next uplift scheduled for December 2025 to accommodate anticipated volume increases as a result of payments migrating from BECS more broadly, including preparing for higher volumes driven by the implementation of proposed Payday super legislation. These capacity uplifts ensure that the NPP has more than sufficient headroom to deal with processing peaks as well as uplifting processing throughput.

Current and planned capacity vs average payments per second (PPS)

Source: AP+ volumetric modelling. Forecast PPS based on AP+ assumptions on future growth rates and forecasted volumes.

In parallel, many NPP Participants are enhancing their infrastructure by leveraging cloud technology. Moving key NPP infrastructure components to the cloud enables scalability, cost efficiency, and improved resilience, in particular helping Participants manage peak processing periods such as Christmas and Easter. 

AP+ is working closely with its vendor SWIFT and Participants to deliver a cloud-based solution for the relevant components of the NPP infrastructure, whilst ensuring the NPP remains robust and adaptable as transaction volumes grow. The target date for this capability to be ready for adoption by Participants is May 2026.

5. Connecting all relevant accounts to send and receive NPP payments  

Over 114 million accounts - about 87% of BECS-reachable accounts held by NPP participating organisations – can now receive NPP payments (as at 30 September 2024), an increase of 12% year on year ¹ .

NPP Participants have plans to enable another ~ 13 million accounts over the next 2-3 years and aim to connect nearly all the remaining BECS-reachable accounts before BECS is retired. Most currently unreachable accounts are low-transaction interest-bearing accounts like loans, term deposits, and grandfathered accounts.  

Participants have reported that in most cases where an account is not NPP-reachable, it is linked to a transaction account that is available - making it easy to transfer funds to the non-reachable account at a customer level.   

AP+ continues to work with industry on resolving outstanding account reach gaps, as well as individual financial institutions’ strategies to manage the customer experience.   

Approximately 30 BECS members are not currently participating in the NPP. Many are foreign bank subsidiaries focused on trade finance and institutional banking with low transaction volumes. AP+ is exploring a modified access model to facilitate their NPP connection in consultation with industry. 

NPP reachable accounts

Source: Participant provided data. As at 30 September 2024.

6. Establishing a contingency framework for NPP  

The NPP is a secure, resilient, and highly available payment system that provides critical infrastructure for the Australian economy. It operates within an established Incident Management Framework, which includes response and recovery measures in the event of an incident. 

Currently, BECS serves as the de facto contingency for the NPP in case of an outage. However, with BECS set to be decommissioned, AP+ will work with industry during 2025 on a contingency strategy and framework to ensure the NPP can manage and recover from prolonged systemic outages, particularly as it takes on greater volumes. This strategy may involve a suite of solutions to cover different scenarios and use cases as well as enhanced incident reporting measures 

Since its launch in 2018, there has been no failure of central NPP infrastructure. From time to time however, individual organisations connected to the NPP do experience planned and unplanned outages to their services. In 2024, 50% of the Participant reported outage incidents were resolved within 2 hours and 75% were resolved in under 6 hours.  

NPP Participants must meet availability targets of no more than two minutes outage per month. Consequences for failure to meet these availability targets include non-compliance charges. AP+ continues to work closely with NPP Participants to drive improvements in resilience. 

Unlocking the potential of modern payments now   

For businesses and government, the transition to modern payments doesn’t have to wait. While there are some key milestones for AP+ and our industry partners as we approach 2030 and the winding-down of Australia’s legacy payments infrastructure, the benefits of faster, data-rich payments are available now – and it’s time for businesses to start planning for this transition.

A phased approach can make the transition more manageable and is an approach being adopted by many businesses today. How businesses consider a phased approach will depend on where individual businesses see the greatest benefits. Businesses may start by focusing on outbound payments, then inbound payments with the adoption of PayTo. Alternatively, they may decide to start by offering PayTo for payments from new customers and then move onto migrating existing direct debit payments. Or, with the impending introduction of Payday super, businesses may choose to start by focusing on their super and payroll payments.  

Whichever approach businesses take, the capability to modernise payments is available now. The first step for businesses is to start the conversation with their bank or payment service provider/s. 

How can businesses benefit from the move to NPP?

Working closely with industry and end users

We’ll continue to work closely with industry, our members and end users and provide updates on key milestones and developments as this transformation progresses. Stay tuned for updates on how business are already experiencing the opportunities and benefits of modern payments.

_{1. AP+ and Participants provide reporting to the RBA on progress made to enable these accounts on a 6 monthly basis for Participants and annually for all Identified Institutions.}