Financial messaging network Swift has won the contract to build a ‘New Payments Platform’ for the Australian banking community, ushering in immediate retail payments and the ability to conduct transactions in the absence of a bank account or BSB number.
Twelve leading financial institutions have committed funding to the project and signed a 12-year contract with Swift to build and operate the NPP basic infrastructure.
Under the terms, Swift will supply a domestic messaging network and payments switch to orchestrate clearing and settlement flows. The third component – a proxy addressing lookup service allowing payment routing based on personal identifiers such as a mobile phone number or email address – will be subcontracted out to Fiserv.
