Australia's program to retire its legacy Bulk Electronic Clearing System has reached an impasse. The Reserve Bank of Australia's March 2026 risk assessment found that the New Payments Platform's PayTo service has yet to demonstrate its maturity as a replacement for batch direct debits, with the total value of PayTo agreements representing a fraction of BECS direct debit value processed during 2025.
The assessment follows AusPayNet's December 2025 decision to formally remove the June 2030 target end-date for BECS. AusPayNet announced at its Sydney summit that industry consultation had found the vast majority of BECS members believed the 2030 goal was no longer achievable. Persistent challenges included the absence of a shared industry vision for the future of account-to-account payments, limited availability of alternatives for direct debits and bulk file processing, and a more complex operational risk environment than originally anticipated.
The RBA found that while PayTo usage grew during 2025, that growth was primarily driven by new payment agreements rather than the migration of existing BECS direct debits. The vast majority of account-based pull payments in Australia continue to flow through the legacy batch clearing system. PayTo currently supports only single direct debit transfers, with bulk payment capabilities still under consideration. The central bank also noted that little progress had been made over the past year to connect BECS-reachable accounts to the NPP, with approximately 3 percent of such accounts expected to remain permanently unconnected.
The New Payments Platform itself continues to show strong growth in credit transfers. The system processed 1.6 billion transactions totaling A$1.99 trillion in 2024, a 23 percent increase year-on-year. PayTo agreements reached 18 million and PayID registrations surpassed 27 million by mid-2025. However, replacing BECS direct debits represents a fundamentally different challenge from credit transfers, requiring mandatory merchant enrollment and consumer re-authorization at a scale that PayTo does not yet support.
The RBA identified insufficient consensus within the industry about the account-to-account payments modernization agenda as a core impediment to progress. This lack of alignment is impeding the effective decision-making and analysis needed to establish a credible migration path. AusPayNet and Australian Payments Plus are now collaborating through an A2A Payments Roundtable with the RBA and Commonwealth Treasury to develop a shared vision and a roadmap of deliverables, with both expected during 2026.
The central bank noted that the nearer-term risks of a disorderly BECS transition have largely subsided following the removal of the deadline, but warned that industry risks losing modernization momentum entirely. The RBA stated that if industry participants are unable to make coordinated progress on modernizing account-to-account payments, it would take further action to achieve outcomes in the public interest. The warning introduces the prospect of regulatory mandates if the industry's voluntary coordination proves insufficient.