Wattle Wire — Tuesday 10 November 2026

Morning! Canada finally goes real time, and NPP keeps eating BECS’s lunch.

Covers Monday morning 9 November to Tuesday morning 10 November 2026, Sydney time.

Regulators checked: RBA, ASIC, AUSTRAC, APRA, ACCC, Treasury, AusPayNet. Items from the RBA are under Regulation & Policy; RBA payments data for September is there too.

The RBA published its monthly Retail Payments statistics for September at 11.30am on Monday 9 November, covering card purchases, card balances, ATM withdrawals, NPP and cheque payments, and average merchant fees by scheme. September is the last full month before the ban on card surcharges took effect on 1 October.

Worth knowing: RBA Retail Payments September special report looks at the ongoing increases in merchant fees, and the suspected next steps for these businesses now surcharging cannot be passed onto customers. The report also looks at continuing trends in credit card accounts, A2A transactions and other payment form factors.

Read: RBA Retail Payments September 2026

Zepto’s 2026 A2A Payments Index, released on 9 November, found Australians moved $21.26 trillion across 5.35 billion account-to-account payments in the year to July 2026, with the NPP carrying 1.99 billion payments (37% of volume) worth $2.84 trillion and driving 71% of new transaction growth. BECS still handled 3.36 billion payments and 86% of value, while PayTo volume rose 135.9% to 6.75 million payments worth $3.93 billion.

Worth knowing: the shape of the shift is clear: NPP is winning the growth, but the old direct entry system still carries the big-value bulk flows, which is exactly why the industry keeps wrestling with how and when to retire BECS. PayTo is growing fast from a small base, so the real test is whether billers and payroll providers move recurring payments across. Zepto also points to $166.8 million lost to payment redirection scams in 2025, a reminder that faster payments need name checks in front of them.

Read: eCommerceNews · Australian FinTech

In an Inc. interview published on 9 November, Mastercard CEO Michael Miebach said agentic purchases remain a tiny share of the roughly 180 billion transactions Mastercard processes each year. He expects them to pick up once the industry settles on regulation, technical standards, loyalty integration and trust tools such as know-your-agent checks and ways to dispute unauthorised agent purchases.

Worth knowing: it is a useful dose of realism from the top of a scheme that has been loudly promoting Agent Pay. For Australian issuers, the list of blockers he names (disputes, liability, agent identity) is a decent checklist for what scheme rules and the local regulators will need to answer before agent payments go mainstream here.

Read: Inc.

Global Payments, which now owns Worldpay, plans a US$699 annual fee for merchants starting on December statements, according to a merchant consultant’s post cited by Payments Dive, which said the company did not immediately respond. The report comes as Global Payments admits to increased competition, carries around US$22 billion in debt and is reportedly weighing a private equity sale.

Worth knowing: when a big acquirer is under pressure, the first place it looks is fixed fees that don’t show up in the headline rate. Australian merchants, now absorbing card costs after the surcharge ban, should expect more scrutiny of exactly these kinds of annual, statement and terminal fees, and local acquirers would be wise to keep their own fee schedules simple.

Read: Payments Dive

ANZ reported its full-year result on 9 November, with cash profit of $7.591 billion and capital that absorbed the acquisition of ANZ Worldline. Wattle Wire’s special report covers what it means for ANZ’s acquiring business.

Worth knowing: the payments story here is acquiring, so the special report is the place to go for the detail.

Read: Wattle Wire special report

Business Today reported on 9 November, citing Business Standard, that HSBC India is in talks to join Apple Pay, following Axis Bank, which went live in September. The report says negotiations over Apple’s share of interchange, reportedly about 15 basis points per credit transaction in most markets, are slowing things down.

Worth knowing: the sticking point is the same one Australian banks have complained about for years: the fee Apple takes for the wallet. India is another market where low interchange makes that cut harder to swallow, which is worth watching as Australia’s own interchange caps bite.

Read: Business Today

Deutsche Bank and Ant Digital Technologies published a joint white paper on 9 November (Hong Kong time) on using AI agents in treasury and liquidity management, cross-border payment orchestration and trade finance. It argues for “bounded” agent execution, with reasoning kept separate from payment execution, revocable spending limits, agent identity binding and know-your-agent checks.

Worth knowing: most agentic talk is about consumers buying shoes; this is about corporates moving money, where mistakes are bigger and controls already exist. The design principles (hard limits, separate approval, a clear identity for each agent) map neatly onto how Australian banks already run payment authorities in corporate banking platforms.

Read: PR Newswire

Payments Canada launched its Real-Time Rail on 9 November (Canada time), letting participants clear and settle payments in real time around the clock, years after its original 2019 target. Eight participants are live at launch, including Wealthsimple, Koho and Bank of America, with the major Canadian banks expected to join in the coming months, and the system includes mandatory central fraud services such as confirmation of payee.

Worth knowing: Australia has had the NPP since 2018, so Canada is catching up, but its design choice is worth noticing: fraud tools, including payee name checks, are built in and compulsory from day one. That is the lesson Australia learned the hard way, with Confirmation of Payee arriving years after real-time payments made scams faster.

Read: BNN Bloomberg

An analysis of the European Payments Council’s Verification of Payee register, published by The Paypers on 9 November, found 2,724 of 2,806 registered providers across 32 countries now respond to name checks. Bulgaria is lowest at 11 of 21 and has until 1 January 2027, while non-euro EU countries have until 9 July 2027.

Worth knowing: Europe made name checks mandatory by regulation and got near-universal coverage fast. In Australia, Confirmation of Payee is an industry rollout, so it is a handy comparison as banks report how many of their customers are actually covered.

Read: The Paypers

Binance said on 9 November that chief financial officer Kaiser Ng is leaving after more than five years, and that Justin Yek, most recently vice president of finance at Airwallex, will replace him. The change comes days after hackers stole about US$6.3 billion from the exchange, though co-CEO Yi He said a transition plan had been in place for six months.

Worth knowing: an Australian-founded payments firm providing the finance chief for one of the biggest names in crypto, in its worst week, is quite a reference. Airwallex alumni are turning up in senior roles across global fintech.

Read: Insurance Journal (Bloomberg)

Drafted by Wattlebird, Wattle Wire’s AI research desk, and checked by an editor. Not financial advice. Summaries paraphrase the linked sources.