Full SKILL.md

Payments Domain

Australia and New Zealand payments domain knowledge for strategy work — the regulators, rails, card economics, and live reforms behind issuing, acquiring, interchange, scheme fees, surcharging, least-cost routing, account-to-account and real-time payments, open banking, and payment licensing. Use whenever the work involves analyzing, sizing, pricing, designing, or advising on any AU or NZ payments product or market — issuing or acquiring economics, interchange or surcharging impact, merchant service cost, A2A or NPP rails, BaaS, KYC, scheme rules, or the regulatory perimeter — even when the user does not say "payments domain". Treat all specific caps, thresholds, and dates as point-in-time and verify them against the primary regulator before stating them as current.

Domain context for AU/NZ payments strategy work: the bodies, the rails, the card economics, and the reforms in flight. This is reference knowledge, not a workflow — it sharpens reasoning across sizing, pricing, product, and regulatory questions. Load the country and economics references when the task goes beyond the mental model below.

Verify-live rule (read first)

AU and NZ payments are mid-reform across 2025–2027. Every specific number in this skill — interchange caps, surcharge rules, licensing thresholds, commencement dates — is point-in-time and drifts. Before stating any figure or effective date as current, web-search the primary source and date your answer. Do not assert a cap or a "from [date]" rule from memory.

Primary sources to check:

  • Australia — RBA / Payments System Board (card standards, interchange, surcharging), Treasury (payments licensing, strategic plan), ACCC (mergers, authorisations), ASIC (ePayments Code, AFSL conduct), APRA (SVF prudential), AUSTRAC (AML/CTF), AusPayNet and AP+ (scheme rules, NPP, BECS transition).
  • New Zealand — Commerce Commission (Retail Payment System Act, interchange, surcharging), RBNZ (settlement, oversight), MBIE (open banking / Customer and Product Data Act), Payments NZ (rails and API standards), FMA and DIA (AML/CFT supervision).

The money flow (four-party card model)

A card payment moves through cardholder → issuer (cardholder's bank) → scheme (Visa/Mastercard/eftpos) → acquirer (merchant's bank/PSP) → merchant. The merchant pays a Merchant Service Fee (MSF/MSC), which decomposes into:

  • Interchange — paid by acquirer to issuer; the largest component; capped by the regulator, not the scheme.
  • Scheme fees — paid to the network by both issuer and acquirer; not capped, less transparent.
  • Acquirer margin — the acquirer/PSP's own take.

Issuing economics are funded largely by interchange (plus annual fees, interest, FX). Acquiring economics are the MSF net of interchange and scheme fees. Most current reform compresses interchange, which squeezes issuer funding (rewards, interest-free periods) and is meant to lower merchant cost. The cross-cutting mechanics are in references/card-economics-and-levers.md.

Who regulates what

Strategic levers that matter

When a question touches any of these, reach for the country reference — the detail and the current state live there.

  • Interchange — the main regulated lever; cuts reshape issuer P&L and merchant cost.
  • Surcharging — whether merchants can pass card cost to customers; under active change in both markets.
  • Least-cost / debit routing — steering dual-network debit to the cheaper network (eftpos in AU); an "expectations" regime, not mandated.
  • A2A and real-time rails — NPP/PayTo in AU; NZ has no consumer real-time push equivalent yet, so account-to-account runs through Payments NZ bulk/settlement rails plus open-banking payment initiation.
  • Open banking — data sharing and payment initiation; live and regulated in NZ, long-standing but low-uptake in AU.
  • Licensing perimeter — who needs a licence to provide a payment service; AU is moving to an activity-based AFSL regime; NZ relies on FMA/AML registration rather than a dedicated PSP licence.

What's in flux (snapshot as of mid-2026 — verify before quoting)

  • AU surcharging + interchange: RBA's March 2026 Conclusions Paper removes surcharging on eftpos/Mastercard/Visa and cuts domestic consumer-credit interchange, effective 1 October 2026; foreign-card caps and transparency measures follow in 2027. Amex, BNPL, and wallets sit in a separate consultation.
  • AU PSP licensing: Treasury's activity-based reform (PSPs under AFSL; prudential rules for large stored-value facilities) — Tranche 1 draft released March 2026, not yet law.
  • AU BECS: the 2030 decommissioning target was withdrawn in December 2025; A2A migration to NPP continues without a fixed end date.
  • NZ interchange: lower caps for NZ-issued cards from December 2025; first-ever caps on foreign-issued cards from May 2026.
  • NZ surcharging: a ban on card surcharging was progressing through Parliament in 2025–26 — confirm whether it has commenced.
  • NZ open banking: live under the Customer and Product Data Act from December 2025 (four majors), Kiwibank phasing in through 2026.

Reference map

  • references/australia.md — AU bodies, rails (cards/eftpos, NPP/PayTo/CoP, BECS transition), interchange and surcharging reform, PSP licensing reform, CDR, ePayments Code, AML/CTF.
  • references/new-zealand.md — NZ bodies, rails (EFTPOS, Payments NZ, ESAS settlement, SBI), Retail Payment System Act and interchange/surcharging, Customer and Product Data Act open banking, AML/CFT.
  • references/card-economics-and-levers.md — four-party model, MSF decomposition, issuing vs acquiring P&L, interchange/scheme-fee mechanics, routing, surcharging math, how reform reshapes issuer economics.

  1. Australia — Payments Detail

    793 w
    references/australia.md6 sub-sections

  2. Card Economics & Strategic Levers

    635 w
    references/card-economics-and-levers.md6 sub-sections

  3. New Zealand — Payments Detail

    606 w
    references/new-zealand.md5 sub-sections

Using this in strategy work

Anchor every claim to the right regime — AU and NZ differ on almost every lever, so never carry an AU figure into an NZ analysis or vice versa. When sizing or pricing, pull the current verified cap/fee, not the snapshot above. If a product-strategy skill is in use, this skill supplies the domain facts behind its monetization, pricing, and regulatory sections, and its fintech-to-general translation table maps these payments terms to broader strategy language.