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Australia is emerging as a regulatory test case for the future of payments policy across the Asia Pacific. In recent years, Australia has moved beyond incremental rulemaking toward a broad reform agenda spanning digital wallets, buy now pay later (BNPL), stablecoins and stored value facilities, interchange and surcharging, and a redesigned payments licensing perimeter.
Few jurisdictions are pursuing payments reform on a comparable scale. Australia combines one of the world’s highest rates of digital payments adoption with a highly concentrated banking sector and a widely used real-time payments rail through the New Payments Platform (NPP). That combination has given policymakers unusually clear visibility into competition, pricing strategies and access dynamics across the payments value chain — alongside the political space to intervene more assertively.
The boundaries between payment policy, competition regulation, digital market oversight and geopolitical strategy are becoming more blurred.
The reforms are also strategically connected. Treasury’s two-tranche licensing reforms are intended to modernise the payments service provider framework and bring a broader range of actors within the regulatory perimeter, including mobile wallets, payment facilitators, BNPL providers and potentially stablecoin issuers. In parallel, amendments to the Payment Systems (Regulation) Act 1998 expand the Reserve Bank of Australia’s powers over payment systems, while proposed reforms to interchange and surcharging would reshape issuer, merchant and scheme economics. BNPL products are also being formally brought within the National Credit Code and associated licensing requirements.
Taken together, these measures represent a shift away from a framework focused primarily on consumer protection toward one which also considers competitive neutrality. At the same time, proposals to bring stablecoins and stored value facilities within graduated prudential and licensing frameworks suggest Australia is seeking to define the boundary between traditional payment rails and emerging settlement technologies.
For other APAC jurisdictions, Australia may offer both a roadmap and an early indication of where payments regulation is heading. Many regional economies are confronting similar structural pressures: rising digital wallet adoption, growing influence of global technology platforms, declining cash usage, concerns around payment concentration, and increasing interest in domestic payment sovereignty. Australia’s reforms, therefore, matter not simply as a domestic policy exercise. Australia is pursuing these reforms within a relatively open, market-led financial system, which may make elements of its approach more transferable to other mid-sized APAC economies facing similar structural pressures.
In Australia, broader considerations around market structure, infrastructure access and emerging forms of payment intermediation are increasingly influencing policy and regulatory design. Proposed reforms to the payments licensing framework and the expansion of the RBA’s regulatory remit are intended not only to modernise oversight, but also to ensure that new forms of payment intermediation do not fall outside the regulatory perimeter simply because they do not resemble traditional banking models. Similar themes are emerging internationally, including in debates around open banking, access to payment infrastructure and global technology firms.
These changes are at least partly linked to policymakers and regulators grappling with the entry and expansion of digital platforms into the banking sector. Digital wallets, embedded finance and platform-based commerce are reshaping how consumers interact with financial services. For incumbent banks, this creates a more complex competitive landscape. As AI agents increasingly initiate transactions, regulators may face new questions around authentication, liability, fraud prevention and consumer protection in automated commerce ecosystems.
Australia’s interchange and surcharge reforms form part of a broader repricing of payments economics across the market. Lower interchange caps and tighter restrictions on surcharging may benefit merchants and consumers, but they are also likely to place pressure on issuer revenues, premium rewards programmes and long-standing cross-subsidisation models within card payments.
More fundamentally, the reforms reflect a growing willingness by regulators to intervene directly in payment pricing structures. Changes to interchange economics can reshape incentives across issuing, acquiring, merchant acceptance, loyalty programmes and consumer payment choice. Over time, they may also influence the relative competitiveness of cards, account-to-account payments, wallets and alternative payment methods.
Across ASEAN, regulators are promoting QR interoperability, local currency settlement and domestic payment connectivity to strengthen regional payment links and reduce reliance on traditional correspondent banking networks.
More fundamentally, stablecoins are moving from the edge of finance toward the regulatory perimeter and represent the first credible challenge to traditional payment and settlement infrastructure in decades. Unlike digital wallets, which largely sit on top of existing payment rails, stablecoins have the potential to create alternative settlement mechanisms that operate across borders, around the clock and outside traditional correspondent banking networks. Regulators are therefore being forced to consider whether stablecoins should be treated as payment instruments, stored value facilities, deposits or a new category altogether.
Australia's emerging framework is therefore about more than digital assets. It forms part of a broader debate taking place across APAC about how new forms of digital settlement should coexist with existing payment infrastructure. Similar questions are being examined in Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan, suggesting that the region may become one of the most important testing grounds for stablecoin regulation globally.
For banks, card schemes and payment providers, the strategic question is not simply whether stablecoins become regulated, but whether they ultimately complement existing payment infrastructure or emerge as a competing settlement layer.
As payments become more digitised and interconnected, resilience and operational dependency are becoming central to the regulatory agenda. Regulators are focusing more closely on cyber resilience, cloud dependence and concentration risk, particularly where critical payments infrastructure relies on a small number of globally concentrated technology providers. Policymakers are also examining whether vulnerabilities within cloud infrastructure, settlement systems or technology intermediaries could create systemic risks across the financial sector.
A related policy priority is the rise in scams, authorised push payment fraud and digital impersonation risks across real-time payments systems. As payments become faster and more platform-driven, regulators are increasingly focused on fraud prevention, identity verification, transaction monitoring and information-sharing across banks, fintechs and digital platforms. Scam prevention is now viewed not only as a consumer protection issue, but also as a matter of trust, operational resilience and systemic integrity. Policymakers are also considering whether liability and reimbursement frameworks should evolve to reflect the growing role of non-bank intermediaries and technology platforms in the payments chain.
Collectively, these developments suggest that payments regulation is becoming increasingly connected to broader questions of competition, resilience, sovereignty and market structure.
The firms best positioned for the next phase of payments evolution will anticipate regulatory change. They will anticipate how regulation, infrastructure design, digital ecosystems and geopolitical fragmentation may reshape competitive advantage across payments markets.
For banks, fintechs and technology firms alike, the strategic challenge is becoming broader than regulatory compliance alone. Decisions about partnerships, infrastructure access, customer ownership, data strategy and geographic positioning may increasingly contribute to long-term competitiveness.
In this environment, regulatory strategy is becoming inseparable from commercial strategy. Firms that position early for shifts in infrastructure, market structure and regional fragmentation are likely to be better placed than those that continue to treat regulation mainly as compliance.
The question is no longer whether payments regulation will expand beyond its traditional boundaries. That process is already underway. The more important question is how governments choose to govern the infrastructure, platforms and settlement mechanisms that increasingly sit at the centre of modern economies.
Australia's reforms suggest that future payments policy may be shaped as much by competition, resilience and sovereignty considerations as by consumer protection alone. If so, Australia may ultimately be remembered less for the reforms themselves than for identifying the direction in which payments regulation across APAC was already heading.
Flint Global advises companies, investors and financial institutions navigating complex regulatory, political and competitive developments across the UK, Europe, Asia-Pacific and Australia. Flint’s work spans payments regulation, financial services policy, digital markets, competition policy and geopolitical risk, helping clients anticipate policy change, assess strategic implications and position effectively in rapidly evolving regulatory environments.
Daniel Trinder is a Flint Senior Adviser covering Asia-Pacific Policy and Regulation based in Auckland. Daniel is a financial services regulation expert and has held senior roles in governments, banks, financial institutions and global bodies, including IOSCO and the IMF. Before joining Flint, Daniel was Executive Director and Chief Economist at New Zealand’s Financial Markets Authority (FMA).