Australia Country Report

Table of Contents

A comprehensive overview of the cards, payments, consumer banking and merchant acquirer market in Australia.

AUSTRALIA CARDS AND PAYMENTS MARKET | KEY FACTS

• Australia's retail banking and payments markets are dominated by the 'Big Four': Commonwealth Bank, Westpac, ANZ and National Australia Bank.
• The country has one of the highest rates of household indebtedness in the world: the average household owes more than $150,000.
• Australian credit cardholders are the highest spenders in the world. Billed volume per card reached $15,191 in 2017.
• The credit cards industry is highly profitable thanks to the high spending, relatively high rollover rate and low loss rates on cards.
• New interchange regulation has severely curtailed the 'companion card' market (whereby cardholders received an Amex card on the same account as their Visa or Mastercard credit card).
• Eftpos, the domestic scheme, has traditionally dominated the debit cards market, but international networks now account for over half of debit card purchase volume. Visa and Mastercard have gained market share due to the rise of
• contactless technology which they developed before Eftpos.
• Acquirers are being forced to offer their merchants' least-cost routing on debit card transactions as the shift to Visa and Mastercard has increased costs for merchants.
• Mobile payments are growing in popularity. However, Apple's dispute with several leading banks means that a sizeable proportion of the population needs to change banking provider or mobile operating system to access services.
• Australia enabled real-time payments in January 2018: NPP (for 'New Payments Platform') allows business and consumers to create a PayID linked to a phone number or email address.