Australian Banks Debut Quarterly Reliability Reports for Retail Payments 

The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) recently unveiled its first quarterly reliability report on banking payment services for households and businesses, part of an effort to increase transparency about the retail payment services sector, according to a ZDNet report Monday (Nov. 15). 

The quarterly report will be published on the websites of large and small banks — including Australia’s four big banks — along with individual service providers’ websites and specialized payment providers, including Teachers Mutual Bank. 

The disclosures will show quarterly statistics on “significant outages” and availability of individual services including ATMs, cardholder payments, access to accounts using online baking, branches, card acceptance for businesses, and expedited and next-business-day account transfers.

“It is vital for the smooth functioning of day-to-day economic activity that retail payments providers maintain reliable services for their customers. The new reliability disclosures are intended to support this objective,” said RBA assistant governor Michele Bullock. 

“The Reserve Bank thanks institutions for their active efforts in developing and disclosing these standardized statistics,” she said. 

The availability of individual retail payment services from July to September was “generally high,” according to the RBA, noting that outage times for some providers’ online banking and account transfer services was high. 

Related news: Corporate Card Platform Cape and Open Banking Platform Basiq Partner on ‘Startup Launchpad’ 

Meanwhile, Australian spend management platform Cape last month teamed up with open banking platform Basiq on Basiq’s newly launched Startup Launchpad. 

The Startup Launchpad provides early-stage startups with access to real-time financial information, in addition to Basiq’s product suite. Basiq’s open banking technology will be integrated into the Cape application and risk analysis process.  

The Cape-Basiq integration helps small- to medium-sized businesses improve the process of connecting their bank accounts and verifying their identity, along with account and income data with Cape, resulting in a quicker credit review and faster access to credit.