New 'sandbox' to help fintechs compete for real-time payments

Start-ups seeking to develop services for the new, real-time payments system will be able to test their capabilities via a new “sandbox” created by its governing body NPP Australia and Swift, the network of global banks that helped build the infrastructure.

The new test environment – which will allow connections with the “new payments platform” (NPP) via “application programming interfaces” (APIs) – comes after criticism from the Productivity Commission in August that access to the big bank-built system is inadequate.

To encourage more competition, NPP Australia introduced a new “NPP API Framework” earlier this month. Its CEO, Adrian Lovney, said the NPP has been designed to be inclusive and “open access”, and the sandbox will give “companies and innovators the chance to understand how they can use its world leading capabilities”.

After a slow start, the latest Reserve Bank data shows more than nine million payments a month are being made over the NPP, worth around $9 billion, and this is expected to continue to increase sharply as awareness grows.

The announcement of the sandbox comes ahead of Swift’s big Sibos event in Sydney next week, which is expected to be attended by around 6000 global bankers. Swift, a network of 11,000 banks, is also building real-time payments systems in Europe and wants to become a “neutral facilitator” of innovation between banks and start-ups.

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Source: New ‘sandbox’ to help fintechs compete for real-time payments | afr.com