Payments System Board Annual Report 2025
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Contents
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The Payments System Board (the Board) has responsibility for the RBA’s payments system policy, including policy on clearing and settlement facilities. In 2024/25, the Board comprised eight members and met at the RBA’s premises in Sydney through the year. During the year, the Board endorsed the RBA’s payments policy strategy, enhanced its code of conduct and its conflict of interest policy, and ensured a high degree of transparency and accountability around its actions through reporting and the RBA’s communication program.
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The RBA undertakes regulatory and policy work on retail payment systems. The RBA oversees the safety and resilience of key payment systems, including Australia’s high-value payments system and the fast payments system. Over the past year, the RBA focused on reviewing and implementing policies aimed at enhancing competition and efficiency for card payments, including commencing the Review of Merchant Card Payment Costs and Surcharging. We also enhanced our oversight of industry’s plans to modernise Australia’s account-to-account payments system, to ensure that it delivers on the needs of end users. The RBA assisted Treasury and other regulatory bodies on reforms to the regulatory framework for payments. With the ongoing shift from cash to electronic payments, the RBA continued to examine issues on access to cash, and those related to the cost, reliability and security of electronic payment services. The RBA considered a number of policy and regulatory issues associated with innovations in the payments system, with a key focus area being research on central bank digital currencies.
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The RBA supervises and oversees licensed clearing and settlement facilities to ensure they conduct their affairs in a way that is consistent with financial system stability. Over the past year, the RBA completed and published assessments of certain facilities, including an out-of-cycle assessment of ASX Clear and ASX Settlement following the CHESS batch settlement failure in December 2024. The RBA also worked with Council of Financial Regulators agencies to reassess the costs and benefits of central clearing of bonds and repurchase agreements, and commenced public consultation on guidance for the use of its crisis resolution powers over domestic clearing and settlement facilities.
ISSN 1448-532X (Online)