Wattle Wire — Wednesday 11 November 2026

Morning! A long night for Westpac, and Brussels sketches rules for shopping bots.

Covers Tuesday morning 10 November to Wednesday morning 11 November 2026, Sydney time.

Regulators checked: RBA, ASIC, AUSTRAC, APRA, ACCC, Treasury, AusPayNet. No payments releases this window.

Wattle Wire published a special report on 10 November on the RBA's September Retail Payments figures, the last full month before the ban on card surcharges took effect on 1 October. It looks at merchant fees, which the report says hit a six-year high, and at what comes next for businesses that can no longer pass card costs on.

Worth knowing: the October figures, due on 7 December, will be the first full month under the ban, so September is the baseline everyone will compare against.

Read: Wattle Wire special report

Westpac customers hit problems with the app, online banking, PayID and Osko payments on Tuesday 10 November, with Down Detector logging 1,714 reports at 4.55pm and Westpac confirming the issues at 5.24pm; late on Tuesday night it was still warning of intermittent problems, and on Wednesday morning it said all services were available again and apologised for the disruption. Customers said they couldn't pay direct debits, buy things at the shops or move money between accounts, and Westpac has not yet said what caused the outage.

Worth knowing: as more volume moves to the NPP and the industry plans for BECS’s retirement, resilience is critically important to reinforce this move. When a major bank's payment channels are patchy from Tuesday afternoon to Wednesday morning, the ripple goes well beyond its own customers: merchant payouts, super contributions, direct debits and property settlements all queue up behind it. Expect questions on the root cause, which Westpac hasn't explained yet, and on how customers who missed payments are looked after.

Read: news.com.au · Yahoo News Australia

Accounting software company Sage announced partnerships on 10 November with Mastercard, as card network partner for debit cards, and Adyen, which provides the banking-as-a-service infrastructure and onboarding. The service starts in France and will expand to Sage's other European markets, letting small businesses make payments, manage spending on debit cards and keep banking linked to their books.

Worth knowing: accounting platforms want to hold the money, not just record it. For Australian banks, embedded accounts and cards inside the software small businesses already live in are a slow-burning threat to the business transaction account, and Adyen is happy to supply the plumbing.

Read: PYMNTS

HSBC UK said on 10 November that eligible small business customers can now accept contactless payments on a compatible smartphone, without a separate card reader, through a Tap to Pay service powered by Stripe. Customers get started through the HSBC Business Banking app.

Worth knowing: the notable part is a big bank renting a fintech's acceptance stack instead of building or owning one. ANZ has just gone the other way, buying out Worldline to run its own acquiring, so these are two very different bets on where merchant economics are heading.

Read: PYMNTS

Block said in a court filing that it will comply with a Federal Trade Commission information request into about 1,500 merchant complaints alleging Square froze or deactivated accounts without notice, Payments Dive reported on 10 November. Block will answer 47 interrogatories and produce documents by 13 November, with a second batch by 30 November, while disputing the allegations; the FTC says the complaints allege at least US$2.5 million in withheld payment proceeds since 2022.

Worth knowing: account freezes are the flip side of signing merchants up in minutes: acquirers that onboard fast lean heavily on risk controls after the fact. Australian small merchants on aggregator-style accounts face the same trade-off, so it pays to know what triggers a hold and how quickly funds are released.

Read: Payments Dive

Latitude Financial, which issues the David Jones credit cards, says on its David Jones card page that it is not accepting new applications at this time, after the retailer went into administration. Existing Prestige and Premiere cardholders can keep using their cards wherever Mastercard is accepted, and card reward points are run by Latitude separately from the David Jones Rewards loyalty program, Finder reported on 5 November.

Worth knowing: a co-branded card is only as strong as the brand on the front, and the issuer carries the book either way. Pausing sign-ups protects Latitude while the retailer's future is unclear, but the real questions are what happens to the partnership economics and to cardholders' points if David Jones is sold or shrinks. Wattle Wire's special report on the administration has more.

Read: Latitude Financial · Finder · Wattle Wire special report

Nothing notable this window. Wattlebird checked and went back to sleep.

Wise made its Everyday Account available to all Australian customers on 10 November, adding PayID, BPAY, local BSB and account details for receiving salary, and fee-free domestic AUD transfers to its multi-currency account. Citing APRA data, Wise said Australian customer balances reached $2.8 billion by the end of September, up 53% year on year, and it is offering variable interest of 3.76% a year on AUD balances after fees.

Worth knowing: this is Wise moving from the travel and remittance app to the account your pay lands in, which is where banks make their money. PayID and BPAY are now the entry ticket for anyone chasing primary-account status, and the pitch is aimed squarely at people who have moved to Australia and juggle money across borders.

Read: IT Brief

PayPal says eligible Australian customers can now split in-store purchases under $2,000 into four payments, either by scanning a QR code on a partner retailer's card terminal or, at JB Hi-Fi only, through a single-use SMS link sent by staff. PayPal announced the terminal option on 6 November with The Good Guys and terminal maker Quest Payment Systems, saying more in-store capabilities will roll out through early 2027.

Worth knowing: this is BNPL moving onto the counter terminal, where Afterpay and Zip already compete, without PayPal needing its own card or a scheme network. The bigger prize is Quest's client list, which includes Coles Group, Australia Post, Aldi, Chemist Warehouse and BP, though PayPal has not yet named any of them as Pay in 4 retailers. The checkout still happens in the customer's phone browser, not every store has it switched on, and PayPal Buyer Protection doesn't cover item-not-received or not-as-described claims for in-store purchases.

Read: PayPal help centre · PayPal media release · Mi3

A leaked draft of the EU's Digital Fairness Act would let consumers delegate purchases to AI agents but require fresh approval where the agent's provider is paid for proposing a contract or has a conflict with the merchant, PYMNTS reported on 10 November, citing analysis by William Fry partner Barry Scannell. Consumers would choose at first use whether to approve every purchase, set conditions such as a maximum price, or let the agent buy without further confirmation, and the European Commission's official proposal was expected on 11 November.

Worth knowing: it is one of the first serious attempts to write consumer law for agent purchases, and it targets the business model rather than the technology: agents funded by merchant commissions get a shorter leash. The draft leaves open who is liable when an agent goes beyond its instructions, the same question Australian issuers and scheme rules will need to settle before agent payments go mainstream here.

Read: PYMNTS

Australian payments provider PayNuts has appointed Zsolt Selmeci as Head of Partnerships, Australian FinTech reported on 10 November; he was most recently at NAB and previously spent more than 25 years at Travelex and Mastercard. He will build a partner channel alongside direct sales, covering software providers, independent sales organisations and referral partners.

Worth knowing: distribution through software platforms and ISOs is where smaller payments providers win merchants without a bank branch network. With the surcharge ban pushing merchants to shop around on fees, partner channels are getting more valuable.

Read: Australian FinTech

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