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The Payment System Used For Settlement Of Retail Payment Transactions

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In this competitive era, it is imperative for a well functioning economy to imply effective methods for businesses to pay their employees, suppliers and investors, for households to purchase goods and services, and for governments to collect taxes and make payments, such as pensions and interest on bonds. These payments, known as retail or low value payments include debit and credit card transactions, cheques and direct entry transactions (Hunt & Terry 2014). In order to improve the efficiency of the payment system, Reserve Bank of Australia introduced a new settlement arrangement. The new ‘same day’ settlement system would increase the rate of supply of funds and reduce the risks associated with deferred net-payment system. The …show more content…

According to the Reserve Bank of Australia (2015), large-value payments are settled one-by-one on a real-time gross settlement (RTGS) basis, while retail payments (which make up to 10% of the value of RITS interbank settlement) are settled on a net-settlement basis. However, for several years, net clearing was undertaken after hours of tallying ADIs deposited amounts during the day. The ADIs would calculate the net amounts each of them owed to one-another to settle their obligations on payment orders. Only then, the RBA would be advised of the cleared net obligations and the transferring of ES funds would take place the next day at 9 A.M. Although this system, referred to as deferred net payment system(DNS) handles very large payment orders deposited each day by net clearing to reduce the amount of funds ADIs have to pay for settlement of obligations(Hunt & Terry 2014), the payments are still deferred until the next day. This phenomenon generally poses a disadvantage of settlement risk (an ADI might default on their obligations). Moreover, if an ADI was unable to settle their obligations due to insufficient funds, the whole settlement process would be delayed. “The longer the period between settlements, the larger these credit exposures could become, and the greater the opportunity for an institution to default on these obligations” (Fraser & Gatty 2014). Hence, the payment system board decided to make a

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