ANZ Bank has become the first major bank in Australia to unveil a proprietary, API facilitated, PayTo service for Billers, with the institution's inaugural transaction completed on 13 December 2023 through the Australian Bond Exchange (ABE).

The PayTo service from ANZ facilitates businesses to submit a payment agreement (a request to debit) to their customers through digital banking platforms. Once this agreement is reviewed and accepted by the biller's customers, the latter authorises the former to collect the payment. This agreement can be either one-off or recurring, ANZ states.

According to Lisa Vasic, ANZ Managing Director Transaction Banking, ANZ was happy to have collaborated with ABE to successfully execute their first PayTo payment agreement and initiation. "We see PayTo as a game changer in the account-to-account payment space, enabling the creation of new payment experiences not possible under existing payment rails in Australia."

"We know payment friction is real and this service will help make collecting payments, and initiating third-party payments, easier and more transparent - while also offering more control over the payments process,” she commented.

ANZ's New Payments Platform (NPP) infrastructure was designed using in-house capabilities without the need for any third-party solutions. Lisa Vasic further explains, “Many Institutional customers are telling us they want the security and simplicity of a natively built bank-grade service, which is why we’ve built PayTo initiation capability in-house.”

Bradley McCosker, CEO of the Australian Bond Exchange stated, "At the core of our business is a commitment to provide equal access to financial products and markets for all investors. Part of this commitment is providing Australians with clear, accurate and timely information, together with the access, tools, and services they need to make excellent financial decisions."

"Using ANZ’s PayTo biller functionality we're able to provide our clients the ability to confirm and settle transactions in real time which helps deliver trust and security in the payments system.”

Katrina Stuart, General Manager of Business Payments at Australian Payments Plus, was delighted to see ANZ come to market as the first major bank offering proprietary PayTo payment initiation services to their corporate and institutional banking customers.

She acknowledged this will enable ANZ customers to benefit from PayTo in multiple ways including immediate payment confirmation, real-time account validation and enhanced data for easier reconciliation.

ANZ has intentions to continue partnering with more customers in the forthcoming weeks to expand the use of PayTo for Billers, and expects wider uptake through 2024. ANZ's inaugural successful transaction involved ABE connecting into ANZ-built PayTo APIs.

This enabled ABE to send a payment agreement to a customer for authorisation. Upon approval from the customer, ABE securely collected funds from the customer’s nominated bank account. The collection of these funds by ABE was cleared and settled through the NPP infrastructure in near real-time.