The vision for account-to-account payments in Australia

A2A vision > Glossary

9 Glossary

• Account-to-account (A2A) payments: Payments that transfer funds directly from one account held at an authorised institution to another, without using card schemes. Examples include payroll, direct debits, peer-to-peer transfers, supplier payments and welfare payments.
• Account-to-account (A2A) payments system: The products, services and infrastructure collectively used to process A2A payments. The payments system may comprise one or more underlying payment schemes and clearing and settlement mechanisms that together deliver end user outcomes.
• Authorised deposit-taking institution (ADI): A financial institution authorised to accept deposits in Australia, such as banks, credit unions and building societies. The definition may expand in future to include non-ADI participants.
• Authorised institution: Currently this is an Authorised Deposit-Taking Institution (ADI), including Purchased Payment Facilities (PPF), but may include non-ADIs in the future.
• Australian Payments Network (AusPayNet): The industry association and self-regulatory body for the Australian payments industry. It manages and develops regulations, procedures, policies and standards governing various payments clearing and settlement systems, including the BECS Framework.
• Australian Payments Plus (AP+): The operator of key domestic payment infrastructure, including the NPP (New Payments Platform) and BPAY.
• Authorised pull payment: A payment initiated by a payee or authorised third party under an existing consent or mandate provided by the payer. Direct debit is one example of an authorised pull payment.
• Batch payments: Multiple payments submitted and processed together in a single file or transaction, commonly used for payroll, superannuation and supplier payments.
• Bulk Electronic Clearing System (BECS): Also known as the direct entry (DE) system, BECS is Australia’s long-standing system for processing bulk, low-value A2A payments such as direct credits and direct debits, typically settled on a deferred basis.
• Clearing: The process of exchanging payment instructions between financial institutions and calculating settlement obligations.
• Consent: An end-user’s explicit permission for a payment to be initiated or managed on their behalf, including the scope, conditions and duration of that authority.
• Core capabilities: The foundational functions and capabilities required across the A2A payments system to deliver baseline service quality, trust and broad public benefit. Core capabilities provide the platform upon which enhanced capabilities and differentiated services are built.
• Digital assets: Digital representations of value including tokenised deposits, wholesale central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), stablecoins and other ledger-based representations of money or financial liabilities.
• Digital identity: A set of verified digital credentials that enable individuals or entities to prove who they are online and authenticate actions such as initiating payments, while preserving privacy and security.
• Digital service provider: An organisation that provides online or technology-based services that are not primarily payment services, for example, software tools or cloud storage.  
• Digital wallet: A digital interface that allows users to store payment credentials, manage accounts, authorise transactions and increasingly orchestrate broader financial interactions including subscriptions, identity and embedded payments and automated services.
• Direct debit: An A2A payment initiated by the payee, with prior authorisation from the payer, typically used for recurring payments such as utilities or subscriptions.
• End-user: Individuals, businesses or government entities that send or receive A2A payments.
• End-user objectives: The outcomes that end-users expect from the A2A payments system, such as ease of use, safety, reliability, value for money and choice.
• Enhanced capabilities: Capabilities that build upon the core foundations of the A2A payments system to deliver additional value, efficiency, innovation or differentiated end-user experiences.
• Embedded payments: Payments that occur automatically within business or consumer workflows (e.g. invoicing, payroll or usage-based billing), rather than as a separate, manual step.
• Enterprise resource planning (ERP): An integrated software system that helps an organisation plan and manage its core resources — such as finance, people, materials, and operations.
• Event-driven payments: Payments triggered automatically by predefined events or conditions, such as delivery confirmation, usage thresholds or contractual milestones.
• Feature and capability rich: A system characteristic describing an A2A system that supports the broad payment types and use cases required by end-users through a common set of core capabilities, while enabling enhanced capabilities to evolve over time in response to changing technologies, business models and end-user needs.
• High-Value Clearing System (HVCS): Australia’s system for high value payments with real-time gross settlement, typically used for large or time critical transactions.
• Identity-based authentication: The use of verified digital identity attributes to authenticate payment initiation and authorisation, reducing fraud and improving user experience.
• Interoperability: The ability for different payment systems, service providers, platforms and different forms of value to work together seamlessly, enabling portability, competition and resilience.
• ISO 20022: An international standard for financial messaging that enables rich, structured and consistent payment data across the payment lifecycle.
• Mandate: A standing instruction or authority that defines who can initiate a payment, under what conditions, and with what limits, safeguards and revocation rights.
• NPP (New Payments Platform): Australia’s real-time payments infrastructure enabling near-instant A2A payments, 24/7 availability, richer data and simpler addressing with PayID.
• Non-ADI: A payment service provider that is not an authorised deposit-taking institution, such as fintechs, payment service providers (PSPs) or digital service providers (DSPs).
• Participants: Banks, payment service providers and other entities whose products, services or infrastructure support or enable the initiation, processing, clearing, settlement, or protection of A2A payments.
• Payee validation: Controls that help confirm the identity of the intended recipient of a payment, reducing misdirected payments and fraud.
• Payment request: A request initiated by a payee or authorised party asking a payer to approve and initiate a payment, without relying on an existing payment mandate.
• Payment service provider (PSP): An organisation that provides payment services to end-users, including non-bank providers, fintechs and intermediaries.
• Payment status tracking: The ability for end-users and payment providers to monitor the progress and outcome of a payment throughout its lifecycle.
• POS (Point of sale): A merchant environment where payments are initiated at the time of purchase, including in-store checkouts and self-service terminals. 
• Providers: Organisations that deliver A2A payment services to customers or businesses, including banks and other payment service providers that enable A2A payment functionality.
• Purchased payment facilities (PPF): Stored value products like gift cards or digital wallets.  
  Real-time payments: Payments that can be made 24/7 and where funds are cleared and available to the recipient almost immediately, typically in seconds.
• Resilience: The ability of the A2A payments system to continue operating during disruptions, recover quickly from incidents, and adapt to changing conditions and threats, including cyber incidents, infrastructure failures and other external shocks.
• Risk-based friction: Targeted security checks or delays applied only when risk indicators are present, allowing low-risk payments to flow smoothly while intervening on suspicious activity.
• Roundtable: The Account-to-account Payments Roundtable is a series of industry roundtables being held between AusPayNet, AP+, the RBA and Commonwealth Treasury, under ACCC authorisation.  
• Schemes: Organised frameworks that establish the contractual, technical and operational rules for a payment system, that can include participant eligibility, messaging and processing standards, clearing and settlement arrangements, risk controls, liability allocation, and dispute resolution mechanisms. In Australia, A2A payment schemes include BECS, NPP, BPAY, eftpos (domestic debit card) and the international schemes Visa and Mastercard (debit cards).
• Settlement: The final transfer of funds between financial institutions to complete a payment.  BECS, HVCS and NPP payments between financial institutions are settled through Exchange Settlement Accounts held at the RBA.
• Structured payment information: Standardised, machine-readable payment data that supports automation, reconciliation, compliance, traceability and integration with business processes.
• System characteristics: The functional and non-functional qualities the A2A payments system must demonstrate to consistently deliver end-user objectives, such as security, resilience, interoperability and effective governance, and which collectively guide system design, investment and coordination across the system.
• Tokenisation: The representation of money or assets in digital token form on a ledger, enabling programmability, automation and alternative models for transferring and settling value.  
• Trust framework: A set of rules, standards, roles and controls that underpin confidence in identity, authentication, data sharing and payment authorisation across the system, including mechanisms that support coordinated response and recovery during incidents.