The third Card Payments Forum meeting was held in Sydney on 21 September 2009. Chaired by Professor Ian Harper, the meeting was attended by 38 senior executives from 24 organisations participating in the card payments system including merchants, financial institutions, card schemes and industry associations.
For the first part of the meeting, participants focused on the Reserve Bank of Australia’s (RBA) recent decision on interchange fee regulation. Invited speakers from the RBA, Assistant Governor Dr Malcolm Edey and Head of Payments Policy Ms Michele Bullock expanded on the Payments System Board’s decision to maintain interchange fee regulation at current levels pending further competitive developments. Dr Edey said the decision represented a deferral of the choice between two regulatory alternatives outlined in the RBA’s September 2008 Conclusions. It was based on recognition of industry effort to meet prerequisites identified by the RBA, along with continuing concern that competitive pressures on interchange fees were not yet sufficient to dispense with regulation.
This session was followed with a presentation by APCA on the key findings of a survey it conducted in August 2009. The survey explored Forum participants’ views on priorities for future collaboration to improve the card payments system. A key issue for many respondents was industry-wide approaches to fraud prevention. While the Forum recognised that effective fraud prevention work was already going on across card schemes and other industry groups, it was agreed that there may be opportunities for the Forum to further support and enhance this work. This will be a focus for next Forum meeting to be held in March 2010.
For further information on the September 2009 Card Payments Forum including the survey of priorities, please go to www.cardpaymentsforum.com.au.