News

30 January 2025

Following the release of our inaugural product roadmap in 2024, we are pleased to publish our updated 2025 roadmap that combines our product and infrastructure priorities. The 2025 AP+ Roadmap outlines key industry and regulatory requirements alongside other major initiatives.​

Key updates include:​

• Click to Pay for eftpos​
• Consolidated developer portal and consolidated member portal​
• NPP multi-credit transfer solution design​
• NPP process and message usage uplift​

Along with the above changes we are confirming December 2026 as the delivery date to upgrade the ISO 20022 version that the NPP operates on. ​

Exploratory work also continues, and any successful developments will be included in future roadmap updates.​

We will continue to engage with the industry and our members as we progress, and updated versions of the AP+ roadmap will be published annually.​

The 2025 AP+ Roadmap outlines key industry and regulatory requirements alongside other major initiatives.

Move to NPP: to prepare for the decommissioning of BECS in 2030, we are focusing on ensuring the NPP has the capability, capacity, reach and resilience to easily manage the expected volume of direct entry payments. This work includes:

• NPP process & message usage uplift: developing an approach for the return of bulk payments processed through the NPP; introducing batch identifiers to support the grouping of transactions; introducing a standard payment instruction format that end users can provide to their financial institution; and uplifting PayTo message usage (Merchant Category Codes, Ultimate Creditor) to support improved fraud screening.
• NPP ISO version upgrade: upgrading the ISO20022 version that the NPP operates on to enable software integrations by international vendors and benefit from innovations adopted in other markets.
• NPP Multi Credit Transfer solution: AP+ will begin detailed design work with industry in 2025 to support high-volume bulk payments with multiple transactions contained within a single message.
• NPP cloud migration: this will allow directly connected participating organisations to integrate their back office with the NPP platform infrastructure via public cloud providers.
• NPP capacity upgrades: ensuring that processing capacity is uplifted across the platform and participating organisations.

Mobile Least Cost Routing (LCR) implementation: the industry is expected to support mobile LCR by the end of 2024.

QR acceptance: our goal is to enable initiation for in-store payments using any smart device, initially via QR. It aims to provide consumers with a greater variety of services at the point of sale and integrate other experiences such as loyalty programs or simplified integrated initiation.

eftpos – token cryptogram: introducing a token cryptogram for cardholder-initiated transactions to enhance the security and efficiency of the Australian payment ecosystem, while fostering customer trust, and compliance with evolving industry standards.

Confirmation of Payee (CoP):  a layer of protection for payments to a BSB and account number in Australia. By matching the account name, BSB and account number entered with the details held by the recipient’s bank, Confirmation of Payee gives more confidence that payments are going to the right account.

eftpos – Click to Pay implementation: AP+ is standing up a Click to Pay service with the ambition to streamline e-commerce checkout and make it consistent, convenient and secure.

NPP PayTo porting: allow consumers to move PayTo agreements between financial institutions without having to contact each merchant and re-authorise their PayTo agreements. This will reduce the impact on merchants when their customers change banks.

Osko / SCT harmonisation: brings together the BPAY OSKO service with the native Single Credit Transfer (SCT) NPP product to simplify real-time payments into a single service, with a single brand and clear value proposition, streamlined rules and associated operational processes.

eftpos to update to 3DS 2.3: AP+ plans to support 3DS 2.3 to help reduce cart abandonment rates and provide enhanced risk management.

3DES migration to AES: Australian card payments will be migrated from 3DES to a new encryption standard (AES) by 2030.

Portal consolidation: AP+ is consolidating the developer experience across our products into a singe developer portal. We are also creating a single front door for members with a unified and streamlined member portal.

Cyber security capability uplift, fraud capability uplift and trust layer: AP+ is uplifting its maturity in the foundational cyber capabilities required to govern, identify, protect, detect, respond and recover from cyber incidents. AP+ is also expanding fraud capability across each AP+ scheme and supporting industry fraud and scam initiatives.

Source: 2025 AP+ Roadmap – Australian Payments Plus

The Government is releasing its Strategic Plan for the future of Australia’s payments system which sets out its policy objectives and priorities for the payments system.

The Strategic Plan was developed through a consultation process in collaboration with regulators, industry, consumer and business representatives.

The Strategic Plan provides businesses with certainty and clarity on the Government’s approach to important issues in the payments system, allowing businesses to invest with certainty and innovate. The Strategic Plan also outlines the Government’s commitment to ensuring that Australia’s payments system is safe, affordable, can be trusted and will remain readily accessible.

The Strategic Plan will be reviewed on an 18 month review cycle. This will allow the Government to report on its progress against its objectives and priorities, and ensure the Strategic Plan is responsive to advances in technology, competition and changes in consumer demand.

Source: treasury.gov.au/

Indue has been a significant player in Australia’s payments sector for more than 50 years. The payments technology provider is an Authorised Deposit Taking institution who specialises in helping organisations of all types adapt to and benefit from the latest innovations in payments technology.

Through its solutions – which encompasses everything from card management and mobile payments to direct entry transactions and real-time fraud detection – Indue aims to eliminate the need for multiple third-party engagements and streamline the payment system implementation process.

Indue is a founding member of Australia’s New Payments Platform (NPP), launched in February 2018 to modernise the nation’s payment infrastructure. The platform enables faster, more flexible and data-rich transactions to meet the evolving needs of Australian consumers, businesses and financial institutions.

Keith Bromwich, Head of Architecture at Indue, says Indue has helped clients adopt the NPP since its inception.

“Our role is to allow tier 2 and 3 financial institutions such as mutuals, regional banks and BAAS providers to access the NPP via our own platform,” he explains.

In June 2023, the NPP introduced PayTo, a new digital way for merchants and businesses to initiate real-time payments from their customers’ bank accounts. PayTo solves many existing challenges with direct debit payments, including processing delays, limited transaction information, and a lack of control for consumers and businesses over payments.

To ensure it could help clients adopt the new payment method, Indue embarked on an ambitious project in March 2022 to transform its technology infrastructure – largely made up of on-premise data centres – and adopt a more cloud-native approach.

“We were trialling Microsoft Azure in pockets of our technology stack, but hadn’t really set it up properly and didn’t quite have the skills to implement some of the amazing capabilities that it offers, like landing zones and event-driven, Zero Trust architecture,” says Bromwich. “We approached Microsoft to recommend a partner that could help us leverage our existing investment in Azure to take advantage of these capabilities and integrate PayTo within the tight deployment timelines mandated by NPP.”

Flexible approach ensures fast implementation 

In May 2022, Indue engaged Microsoft partner Arinco to help it develop enterprise-scale landing zones and a robust application programming interface (API) platform in Azure.

“The people we worked with at Arinco were absolute knowledge leaders,” says Bromwich. “They helped us make the right decisions by providing the pros and cons.”

Arinco used a flexible delivery approach to facilitate development timelines, which saw the first application landing zones for PayTo being implemented by early July 2022. This enabled Indue’s developers to build new capabilities for testing by October 2022.

As this was Indue’s first major deployment of modern web APIs in Azure, Arinco supported and educated Indue’s developers and engineers by leveraging its partnership with Microsoft.

“Firstly, we embedded consultants within Indue’s development teams, focusing on accelerating outcomes and providing best practice guidance for topics such as .NET development, Azure API deployment and security,” says James Westall, Account Executive at Arinco.

“Secondly, our consultants worked with Indue’s platform engineers, sharing our expertise with them as we developed code for each landing zone. This meant that at transition time, Indue engineers were starting from a solid knowledge base.

“Lastly, we partnered with Microsoft to deliver hands-on Azure Accelerate workshops. These covered key topics identified by Indue, enabling employees to get familiar with Azure in a safe environment with instructor guidance.”

The other challenge that Arinco helped Indue solve was the operational sign-off of its Azure capability.

“As an entity that’s regulated by the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority, Indue must be able to attest to the security, stability and robustness of its services,” explains Westall. “The deployment that we developed was designed to remain compliant using Azure and third-party security tools, including the capability to hold Payment Card Industry data.

“We also assisted Indue in developing several operational documents and procedures, ensuring key details about running solutions on Azure were available for external auditors.”

Arinco’s accelerated approach enabled Indue to launch its PayTo integration within the tight timeframe and begin onboarding clients in June 2023.

 

Enhancing innovation in the cloud

While Indue is still in the early stages of its cloud journey, its event-driven architecture in Azure is already delivering benefits. These include increased flexibility and scalability, which enable Indue’s developers and engineers to deploy any project – not just PayTo – in the cloud much faster and move from business idea to development workload in minutes or hours rather than days.

“The innovation piece is a key focus for Indue and its customers,” says Ryan Spain, Chief Information Officer at Indue. “Leveraging cloud-based technologies like Azure gives us access to a much wider variety of innovative capabilities in a fraction of the time compared to on-premise, and enhances the products and services we can offer.”

Indue’s move to the cloud has also helped them simplify its technology stack and reduce operational costs. Transitioning its Corporate Services (Virtual Desktop, remote access, and Office environment) to the Azure Virtual Desktop capability which operates within the enterprise-scale landing zone structure.

Now, key personnel can focus more on value-adding tasks rather than maintaining the performance and security of Indue’s hardware and software.

“We don’t have to worry about data centre connectivity or patching. All of that low-level maintenance is done by Microsoft,” says Bromwich.

Indue plans to grow its cloud footprint in Azure by kicking off two other major projects in 2023. One will focus on implementing a big data lake that leverages Microsoft’s advanced analytics capabilities. The other project will focus on migrating Indue’s on-premise Microsoft Dynamics 365 platform to Azure. Both projects will further enhance Indues’ ability to deliver innovative payment solutions and a better customer experience, according to Spain.

“This is a strategic partnership with Microsoft,” he says. “They’ve been on the journey with us from the start, and we really appreciate the assistance and guidance they’ve provided. The partnership has been a key enabler for facilitating both the PayTo integration and our broader cloud strategy.”

Source: Microsoft News 30 June 2023

Indue is excited to announce the official launch of its PayTo service offering, enabling financial institutions and payment service providers and platforms to drive payment innovation and improved customer experiences.

A development of Australian Payments Plus on it’s New Payments Platform (NPP), PayTo modernises the way bank accounts are used for payments, helping businesses and consumers thrive in the digital economy.

Indue CEO Derek Weatherley said the PayTo launch is a natural extension of Indue’s NPP capability, which has been helping Australia’s leading mutual and community banks take advantage of flexible, real-time payments with industry-leading financial crime support since 2018.

“At Indue, we are committed to investing in product technology advancements that support our client’s digital transformation, innovation, and competitiveness, exemplified now through PayTo,” Mr Weatherley said.

“We have a team of NPP experts that have already begun to connect partners to PayTo, delivering them a faster, simpler, and smarter real-time payment service.

“We are thrilled to be part of the PayTo revolution and, as always, are keen to help our current and future customers keep pace with the changing Australian payments landscape.

“PayTo will enable a superior payment experience by streamlining payments and improving efficiency and control for consumers and businesses.  This is achieved by PayTo while at the same time reducing risks and modernising the way money moves.

“Ultimately, PayTo further enhances Indue’s digital banking offering, providing a state-of-the-art payment services experience for our customers.”

Indue can connect financial institutions, payment service providers and platforms to PayTo .

To learn more and get PayTo ready, click here.

For 135 years, The Mutual Bank has met the financial needs of the Maitland, Newcastle, and Hunter communities in New South Wales, serving and supporting them in building a sustainable future.

Since March 2022, Indue has provided The Mutual Bank and its members with a significantly expanded payment services suite, including Direct Entry, BPAY, NPP, Financial Crimes, Anti-money laundering, Card Services, High Value Payments, and an expansion of its Digital Payments offering.

The Mutual Bank CEO Geoff Seccombe said the partnership continues to be driven by a strong alignment in company values, product offerings, and payment needs.

“Our relationship with Indue began when we needed assistance in becoming the first local mutual bank issuer of Apple Pay in the region. But it is founded upon much more than a vested interest in innovative payments technology,” Mr Seccombe said.

“Indue earned our trust, respect, and business by delivering on its payment services promise, and it has kept it by continuing to share our community-first focus and partnership culture.

“I commend Indue for its support of the local communities in which we operate, and its unwavering commitment to environmental, social, and cultural initiatives,” Mr Seccombe said.

Indue CEO Derek Weatherley said that alignment with our clients’ sustainability practices, community programs, and employee wellbeing are core to our values.

“The best partnerships are achieved when company culture and core values align, which is what we have experienced with The Mutual Bank,” Mr Weatherley said.

“We have an excellent understanding of The Mutual Bank’s priorities and their wider community goals in operating in a socially responsible manner, prioritising positive social impact and a genuine ‘one team’ support model with on-the-ground support.

“We look forward to continuing to work with The Mutual Bank and its community” Mr Weatherley said.

21st March, 2023

Indue is excited to welcome in the next era of high value payments processing, as the industry reached a significant milestone this week with a major multi-year upgrade to ISO20022 messaging standards, to future-proof the payments system and enable domestic and international payment system interoperability and data-rich messaging.

In conjunction with the rollout of this major industry upgrade, Indue has enhanced its high value payment processing technologies to maximise the operational efficiencies and security posture of the system.

Indue Chief Executive Officer Derek Weatherley said these new messaging standards will bring many benefits for customers and their operational staff, such as improved financial crime monitoring, rich data and international harmonisation via the SWIFT network.

“We have kept clients front of mind while redeveloping our high-value payment processing capabilities to ensure they capitalise on the value of the technology,” Mr Weatherley said.

“Among many benefits, our clients will have access to streamlined end-to-end processing and full self-service capabilities through the online portal that enables real-time transaction tracking, approval and auditing.

“The upgrades also support API messaging for updates, notifications and other functions, automated approval processes, significantly lowering operating costs and risks, as well as modernising the overall security posture, including multi factor authentication.

“Our processing capabilities align with the ISO20022 upgrades to ensure our clients can enjoy greater operational efficiencies, and we look forward to driving faster payment experiences with the roll-out of these technologies.”

The upgrade was launched with Auswide Bank in March 2023, with an iterative roll-out across our full client base underway.

The NPP October 2022 Roadmap has been published.

An update on the NPP roadmap is now available providing the latest numbers relating to the growing use of the NPP. There are now close to 89 million accounts able to make or receive NPP payments and the platform now processes more than 100 million transactions a month. One in three of all account-to-account credit transfers are occurring via the NPP. There are close to 13 million registered PayIDs, a 44 per cent increase since the same time last year with 315,000 new PayID registrations on average being added every month. Usage of PayID is growing with research conducted by NPP Australia revealing that 47% of users using PayID at least weekly.

Read the latest Roadmap here.

Blockchain and
crypto have made a surprising resurgence to the agenda at Money 20/20, likely
driven by the growth in central bank currency pilots and collaborations into potential
use cases for government issued digital currency. The Indue client tour
participants absorbed broad learnings on how the concept of a fully digital
decentralised network could benefit customers and clients in the payments and
banking sectors.

A wide spread of
blockchain use cases were presented, everything from connected cars through to
micro payments, with the major feature being the ability to move money in
real-time at lower cost, a presumption that we see either prove or disprove
itself in the years to come.

The focus on the
use of crypto in payments has been heavily on enabling cross-border
transactions, as well as the challenges posed by increasing regulation.

The bold headline
from proponents of the technology at Money 20/20 was that everything will be on
blockchain – it’s only a matter of time.

This optimism
comes with words of warning. These technologies continue to be developed
through a cycle of uncertainty and regulation remains a major challenge. With
improved regulation we will likely see a more stable and genuine value emerge
for crypto and the development of more businesses with underlying strength.

With these
expansive developments in the fintech space, Indue continues to stay tuned to
these innovations to provide our clients and their customers with strategic
guidance and forethought on the payments landscape of the future.

The Money20/20 conference has given us the opportunity to hear from a wide range of world-class speakers, including global entrepreneurs and even a Grand Slam tennis champion, who have all touched on the intrinsic link between organisational culture, diversity, and performance.

The companies that are best positioned to establish a competitive edge are the ones that embrace a culture of prioritising diversity of people and thought, and equally, this diversity is the best form of due diligence when developing new business models or entering new markets.

In a broad ranging discussion about fintech and start-ups featuring Serena Williams, we heard about new business models and solutions that are focused on solving problems for customers, leveraging the power of partnerships, and driving a competitive edge through organisational culture embracing diversity.

We were also fortunate to hear from several women who have founded new payment fintech companies in the past two years, including Kontempo – a Mexico-based bank focused on providing credit to small businesses, Lucy – which is providing funding for female entrepreneurs, and the competitive edge through embracing diversity was a recurring theme.

The theme of modernising core was prevalent, ensuring foundations are built on future proofed architecture. Another common theme in this vein was ‘build core, partner everything else’. This includes leveraging partnerships for insightful and innovative product design, and the theme of diversity featured again through partnerships that support organisational diversity, with a US Bank focussing a commitment to diversity though partnering with fintechs who are focused on minority/women only businesses.