PAYMENTS DATA

A description of the Australian payments system and a range of statistics including some overseas comparisons can be found in:

• Payment Systems in Australia (BIS Red Book) - PDF 402K
• Payment Systems in EMEAP Economies (EMEAP Red Book July 2002) - PDF 1.9M

Statistics on cheques and direct entry payments have been collected on a survey basis by the Australian Payments Clearing Association since 1994. The Reserve Bank began collecting monthly statistics from banks on both credit and debit card transactions at the same time.

In 2001, the Reserve Bank implemented a new retail payments statistics collection. The first material from this collection, providing monthly data from January 2002, was released in 2003. The collection covers cheques and bulk electronic transfers as well as debit, credit and charge cards. It draws data from most financial institutions (banks, building societies, credit unions, card companies) and some other payments system participants.

The Reserve Bank also publishes statistics on high-value payments from its real-time gross settlement system. Relevant data on the Australian payments system can be found using the links below:

• Bulletin table C1 - Credit and Charge Card Statistics - XLS
  • Additional Credit Card Statistics - XLS
• Bulletin table C2 - Market Shares of Credit and Charge Card Schemes - XLS
• Bulletin table C3 - Merchant Fees for Credit and Charge Cards - XLS
• Bulletin table C4 - Debit Card Statistics - XLS
• Bulletin table C5 - Cheques and Direct Entry Payments - XLS
• Bulletin table C6 - Real-time Gross Settlement Statistics - XLS
• Bulletin table C7 - Points of Access to the Australian Payments System (Annual) - XLS
• Australian Payments Clearing Association
• Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Statistics