Friday 30 October 2026
Photo: Pavel Danilyuk / Pexels
Top of the morning
Mastercard's services keep outrunning its network. Q3 net revenue rose 14% to US$9.8 billion. Value-added services grew 19%, against 11% for network revenue, driven by fraud, identity and cyber tools, marketing and loyalty services for card issuers, and data and consulting, with a lift from higher token pricing.
The A2A talks get six more months. These are the industry talks, run by AusPayNet and AP+ with the RBA and Treasury, on what replaces the ageing BECS direct-entry system and how NPP grows. The ACCC proposes letting them run to 31 July 2027, and the roadmap expected in 2026 has slipped into 2027.
Visa and Tencent sign up to explore agent payments. A new MoU extends their cross-border partnership to AI agents shopping through Visa Intelligent Commerce, alongside Weixin Pay links for travellers.
Regulator watch
ACCC: Draft determination proposing to extend the AusPayNet and AP+ account-to-account collaboration authorisation by six months, to 31 July 2027. Issued Wednesday afternoon, just before this window, and reported on Thursday. Details below.
APRA and ASIC: Both chairs gave opening statements to Senate estimates on Thursday. Neither covered payments; APRA's focused on AI-enabled cyber risk and reliance on common technology providers.
RBA, AUSTRAC, Treasury, AusPayNet: no payments releases found this window (AusPayNet is a co-applicant in the ACCC item).
Regulation & Policy
ACCC proposes six more months for the A2A industry talks
On Wednesday the ACCC issued a draft determination proposing to extend, on substantially the same terms and with conditions, the authorisation that lets AusPayNet, AP+, BECS, NPP and HVCS members and other stakeholders jointly plan the future of Australia's account-to-account payments, to 31 July 2027. PayDay News reported on Thursday that participants are struggling to agree, and that public consultation on a roadmap is now expected early in the new year.
Background: the "A2A talks" are the A2A Payments Roundtable, where the industry works with the RBA and Treasury on one plan for Australia's bank-to-bank rails: BECS, the decades-old batch system behind direct debits, payroll and bill payments; NPP, which carries PayID, Osko and PayTo in real time; and HVCS for high-value payments. Competitors normally can't coordinate like this, so in August 2025 the ACCC authorised the talks until 31 January 2027. That covers discussion and in-principle agreement on a future state, but not implementing it.
Worth knowing: last December AusPayNet dropped its June 2030 target for switching off BECS, saying a date would only come back once there was a clear roadmap, and said the vision and roadmap were expected in 2026. Six more months means no settled BECS plan before mid-2027, which is also when the RBA expects to start consulting on its payments review priorities. If your direct debit, payroll or PayTo plans assume a BECS end date, keep them flexible.
Also: PayDay News
Armaguard's new cash-in-transit pricing draws cost questions
PayDay News reports that Armaguard's proposed new pricing for cash-in-transit services would treat new and existing customers differently, and that the company paid no tax in FY25. The Independent Payments Forum is calling for stronger cost controls and protections for regional customers.
Worth knowing: since the RBA designated Armaguard under the Cash Distribution Framework Act in September, pricing is where that regime starts to bite. Banks and large retailers pay these rates and pass them on, so a two-tier price list matters to anyone negotiating a cash contract. Watch whether the RBA or ACCC weigh in on the cost basis.
Read: PayDay News
Schemes & Networks
Mastercard Q3: revenue up 14%, services up 19%
Mastercard's Q3 net revenue rose 14% to US$9.8 billion. Value-added services and solutions, the products Mastercard sells on top of processing transactions, grew 19% to US$4.06 billion, while payment network revenue grew 11%; gross dollar volume rose 7% in local currency to US$2.95 trillion and cross-border volume rose 11%.
What the extras are: on the results call, CFO Ling Hai and CEO Michael Miebach named the drivers:
Security: fraud, identity and cyber tools, including Recorded Future threat intelligence and Digital Risk Protection, which Miebach said already has nearly 800 enterprise customers.
Issuer marketing and loyalty: services that help banks win and keep cardholders.
Data: analytics, insights and consulting.
Digital and authentication.
Pricing: including higher token pricing.
Hai said about 60% of services are tied to network activity, and that some projects and deals were pulled forward from Q4, so expect some offset next quarter. On agentic commerce, Miebach said agent transactions are growing fast week to week but are "not yet significant", and named Shopify and OpenAI as Agent Pay partners.
Worth knowing: for Australian issuers and acquirers, these are costs that sit outside core scheme fees, like token fees, fraud scoring and threat intelligence, and they're much harder to benchmark than interchange. Hai's comments confirm some of the growth is price, not just volume. Miebach also said one-time virtual card numbers are only a stopgap for agent payments and that full tokenisation through Agent Pay is the end state. That's useful context for any local issuer working out its agent strategy.
Visa and Tencent extend their partnership to AI agent payments
Tencent and Visa signed an MoU to make it easier for travellers to pay across the Weixin Pay and Visa networks, and for overseas senders to move money into Weixin Pay via Visa Direct. They will also explore letting AI agents find, select and buy products for eligible users through Visa Intelligent Commerce, subject to regulatory and data requirements.
Worth knowing: Chinese visitors and students are a big source of spending in Australia, so smoother links between Weixin Pay and Visa matter to merchants here. The agent part is only exploratory for now. Still, it shows the schemes want their agent frameworks inside the big Asian super-apps, not only US chatbots.
Read: Fintech News Singapore
Issuing & Acquiring
Elavon's CEO: agentic commerce should put safety ahead of speed
Elavon CEO Wally Mlynarski told Payments Dive at Money20/20 that the industry should focus on safety and soundness rather than rush agentic commerce, and that the US bank-owned wallet Paze is "ready to do pilots" for agent use. He also said wallets have struggled to make the economics work, and that adding agents to the chain makes it harder.
Worth knowing: when a bank-owned acquirer argues for slowing down, part of that is about who controls the customer relationship. The economics point travels, though: every agent, wallet and token service in the chain takes a cut. Australian acquirers, already squeezed by the surcharge ban, will be asking the same question.
Read: Payments Dive
Digital Wallets
Samsung Wallet adds a cash back account with tap-to-transfer
Samsung has launched a virtual Cash Card in Samsung Wallet in the US that holds cash back earned through Rakuten deals and can be spent online or in store. Users can also send money between Samsung Wallet accounts, including by tapping two Android phones together.
Worth knowing: the wallet is turning into an account, with its own balance, rewards and P2P, rather than just holding your bank card. It's US only for now. If something like it came here, it's the kind of stored-value product Australia's payments licensing reforms are meant to cover.
Read: 9to5Google
New Products & Features
Nothing notable this window.
International
UnionPay and Cuscal Paymark plan closer work in New Zealand
UnionPay chairman Dong Junfeng met Cuscal Paymark in Auckland to discuss growing UnionPay acceptance in New Zealand, and a release on Thursday said they agreed to strengthen technical coordination during system upgrades and explore wallet connectivity. Topics also included SoftPOS, chip upgrades for dual-branded cards and agentic payments.
Worth knowing: Cuscal Paymark is Cuscal's New Zealand switching business, so this is an Australian player shaping card acceptance across the Tasman. There's no binding deal here, only commitments to coordinate and explore. Keeping UnionPay working through the switch upgrades is the practical piece.
People moves
Christine Lagarde to leave the ECB on 7 February 2027
ECB President Christine Lagarde told the Governing Council and European Council President António Costa on Thursday that she will step down on 7 February 2027. The release gave no reason, and the European Council will nominate her successor under the EU treaty process.
Worth knowing: Lagarde has been the digital euro's most prominent backer, so her successor will inherit the pilot and the legislative fight. It's worth watching from Australia, where the RBA has been weighing up retail CBDC.
Read: ECB
Coming up in Analysis
What another six months means for the A2A roadmap · Scheme services revenue and what acquirers actually pay for · Cash-in-transit pricing under the RBA's designation regime
Drafted by Wattlebird, Wattle Wire's AI research desk. Not financial advice. Summaries paraphrase the linked sources.