Paying by card is the most popular way to pay in Australia and has one the highest adoption with regards contactless payments. Recently the last of the big 4 banks have adopted apple pay and this will see a rise in mobile payments at point of sale.
In 2019 Consumers and businesses made more than 9.9 billion card transactions up 11.5% on FY 2018. Debit cards continue to dominate, representing 70.3% of all card transactions. Debit card use increased by 14.6% to 6.9 Billion transactions and by 9.3% in value to $333.4 Billion. Credit card use grew by 4.6% to 2.9 Billion and by 2.0% in value to $336.1 Billion.
Below is a high-level view of the payment ecosystem in Australia.
Cardholder: Customer and holder of a credit/ debit/ charge card who uses this payment method to purchase goods or services.
Merchant: Business that accepts payment for goods and services
(Online) Payment Gateway: Technology platform that facilitates the communication of a transaction to and from the issuer. Provides the merchant with a back-end user portal to display transactions activity with additional functionality
Acquirer: Sends payment transactions to the schemes for authorisation with issuers. Enables a merchant to accept payments and settle to a nominated bank account.
Scheme: Technology platform that connects Acquirers and issuers which includes clearing and settling functionality. The most popular card brands include Visa, Mastercard, AMEX, Dinners, JCB, Union Pay and locally EFTPOS.
Issuer: Issues scheme branded cards to cardholders and are usually a bank like the big 4 banks. Types of cards issued include credit, debit, prepaid and charge. Issuers authorise payments that are initiated by the cardholder that are come from Acquirers via the schemes.
Central Bank: The central bank is also known as the RBA (Reserve bank of Australia). Funds are settled via the RBA from the issuer to the acquirer which in turn are settled to the merchant.
If you have any to add or have any feedback it would be great to hear from you.
Comments