Success Stories In Real-Time Payments From Payments Canada Summit
Nearly 80 countries have real-time payment systems, with dozens more building platforms. Brazil and Australia shared their experiences at the Payments Canada Summit on Thursday.
Brazil’s PIX may be the best real-time payments system. Launched late 2020, it reached three billion transactions a month in March.
Carlos Eduardo Brandt of the Central Bank of Brazil argued that by developing and administering the system itself, the bank can be a neutral agent and allow PSPs to compete on service.
Australia’s 2018 New Payments Platform processes five million transactions daily. May Lam from Australian Payments Plus underlined the importance of platform development and functionality. She told the gathering that NPP is moving forward with PayTo, which lets businesses start payments from clients’ bank accounts.
Steve Haley from the Mojaloop Foundation, which develops open-source software for digital payment system interoperability, joined Brandt and Lam. Haley noted that while Brazil and Australia can teach others, there are still major distinctions. USSD prevents smartphone QR code services from working in Africa and Southeast Asia.
Participants agreed that creating a real-time payments system is a long, involved process that requires changes.
May said PayTo took seven years to launch due to delays. She underlined the need of majority agreement from industry actors with very varied agendas and when perfect consensus is unattainable.
In Brazil, the bank witnessed more QR code payments being refused than expected, Brandt said. The bank developed a QR code tester to assist PSPs that were misusing the system.
