Despite pioneering real-time bank transfers in 2018, Australia remains a laggard in account-to-account payments, with cards still dominating checkout counters.
Australia trails the region in bank transfers
Account-to-account (A2A) payments make up just 5% of Australian e-commerce and 3% of point-of-sale transaction value in 2025, according to the Global Payments Report. That puts Australia among the lowest adopters of A2A payments in the entire Asia Pacific region, despite running the New Payments Platform, which enables instant transfers between bank accounts through services like PayTo. The report is based on a survey of more than 63,000 consumers across 42 markets.
The gap with regional neighbours is stark. Thailand’s PromptPay system pushed A2A to 44% of e-commerce and 43% of point-of-sale value in 2025. Malaysia’s DuitNow hit 35% online, and Indonesia’s BI-FAST reached 34%. All three run on national real-time payment systems with wide merchant acceptance, something Australia has struggled to replicate at scale.
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Masseh Haidary, head of Integrated and Platforms APAC at Global Payments, says the infrastructure was never really the problem. “Australia has built the infrastructure, but consumer behaviour takes longer to change. PayTo gives Australians the ability to pay directly from their bank account in real time, yet cards remain the default at checkout. Where A2A is used, it’s concentrated among a narrow group. Our data reveals a clear generational divide, with nearly one in five Australians aged 18 to 24 (17.4%) citing A2A as their most-used online payment method, the highest of any age group by a wide margin.
However, adoption falls sharply with age to 6.3% among 35 to 44 year olds, 2.7% among those aged 55 to 64, and 1.9% among Australians aged 65 and over. These figures suggest A2A payments are taking hold among digitally native consumers rather than the broader population. Cards remain deeply embedded, accounting for 37% of e-commerce and 64% of in-store transaction value in 2025, while much of Australia’s A2A activity continues to flow through digital wallets.”
A regulatory nudge ahead
A 2025 Reserve Bank of Australia decision to repeal merchant surcharging rights and lower interchange fee caps takes effect from October 2026, changing the economics of accepting card payments and potentially making lower cost alternatives like A2A more attractive to businesses.
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Haidary is careful not to oversell how quickly that shift will happen. “Cards and digital wallets will remain central to how Australians pay for some time. As regulatory reforms take hold, you’d expect real time account to account payment volume to lift, albeit from a low base as our data reveals.”
For SME owners weighing up payment options ahead of the October changes, the takeaway is less about switching overnight and more about watching the shift now underway, and thinking about whether cheaper transfer methods might make sense once the new fee rules land.