Australian Payments Plus (AP+) has today shared insights from its public consultation on the capabilities needed to support continued growth and adoption of the New Payments Platform (NPP) - Australia’s fast payments infrastructure.
The NPP-specific consultation was conducted separate to the joint consultation with Australian Payments Network on the future vision for account-to-account payments, the findings of which were also released earlier today.
Launched in July 2025, the NPP capabilities consultation brought together perspectives from across the payments ecosystem – from banks and government agencies to software providers, businesses and end-users – to explore what capabilities and enhancements are needed to support the migration of payments to the NPP.
The consultation highlighted a few clear priorities:
- Bulk payments: Businesses and government agencies stressed the importance of reliable bulk processing for payroll, superannuation, supplier disbursements, government benefits, dividends, and high-volume biller collections. Features that would provide value included validation of account and payee details, fast rejection notifications and richer data to streamline reconciliation.
- Standard payment instruction: Broad feedback that industry should adopt a consistent format to improve interoperability between providers, reduce cost, and enhance the customer experience.
- Batch booking: Seen as vital for payroll and supplier payments, and supporting privacy, efficiency and reconciliation, especially for large organisations managing multiple payments in a day.
- Trace accounts: Opinions were mixed, with some stakeholders seeing value in trace functionality for managing returned payments, while others questioned the need in a near real-time environment given payments are rejected in real time.
What’s next
The feedback will help shape ongoing work to develop a new bulk payment service and a standard payment instruction format for the NPP.
AP+ will continue to work with industry to prioritise new capabilities and enhancements for inclusion in the NPP roadmap, with further updates to follow in 2026.
The full report with findings from the public consultation on NPP capabilities is available here.
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