Payments NZ responds to Council of Financial Regulators, Reserve Bank statements on Payments policy
27 Jul 2023
Payments NZ welcomes the Council of Financial Regulators’ (CoFR) vision statement for payments, and the Reserve Bank of New Zealand’s (RBNZ) statement about the importance of developing a real-time payments system for Aotearoa New Zealand.
This is a priority work programme for us and we’re well underway with the foundational work within the payments system.
We’re pleased with the clarity provided by both the RBNZ and CoFR in their statements.
We agree that the payments landscape in Aotearoa needs to be innovative, inclusive, and responsive to change, as well as efficient and reliable. The core payments systems we govern are efficient, safe, open and interoperable and transact over NZ$6 trillion a year.
Together with our industry stakeholders, we continue to look at ways to modernise our payments system and ensure it serves the country well now and into the future.
A few years ago, we set out our vision and the building blocks of this future in our 2020 Payments Modernisation Plan (PMP). A cornerstone of the PMP is real-time capability. Which is why this year, we have led industry work to develop the foundational design of a next generation payments ecosystem, which will be grounded in real-time payments capability. We’ll be ready to share key elements of this design in the coming months.
We believe a next generation payments ecosystem is a critical enabling infrastructure investment that presents the opportunity to future-proof the payments system in Aotearoa.
In addition to real-time payments, it can deliver a broad set of capabilities that can be leveraged to support competition, innovation, economic and productivity improvements, as well as environmental, social and governance (ESG) aspirations. All these traits will strengthen consumer safety, fraud prevention and compliance.
This work delivers on the key areas raised by CoFR, including the delivery of strategic synergies and opportunities, improved innovation, inclusion, and competition, as well as providing the groundwork for new functionalities to be added over time.
As our work progresses, we will continue to engage with the RBNZ, CoFR and industry stakeholders as we move toward decisions around the formal design phase in 2024.
There is clear alignment between the RBNZ, CoFR and Payments NZ’s vision that the industry should continue leading work to develop and implement next generation real-time capability. We look forward to continuing to deliver world-class payments for Aotearoa through this and our other building block payments modernisation activities.