GoCardless, which claims to be a global leader in direct bank payment solutions, has announced it is “officially live in the market with PayTo, an instant account-to-account payment method that has been designed to replace Australia’s traditional Direct Debit network in approximately three to five years.”
PayTo has already “been welcomed by the payments industry as a game-changer, featuring faster and more secure transactions than ever before.” PayTo is already “available across more than 29 million bank accounts across 40 banks.”
PayTo allows merchants and businesses “to initiate instant, verified payments from their customer’s bank accounts – except the customer now has full control and visibility over billing by authorizing payments from within their banking app or online account.”
Once authorized, the customer will be “able to see any agreement within their banking app.” The platform “has the potential to greatly reduce hidden fees, merchant costs, fraud and failed payments.”
While some financial services within Australia are already ‘PayTo ready’, GoCardless is the first provider of their scale and international presence “to go live with the payments infrastructure, offering the new payment network alongside their Direct Debit solution.”
This allows GoCardless “to provide a range of additional functionality such as refunds, international payments and more, all with the option to sit side by side with traditional Direct Debit.” As of today, merchants are “able to sign up to GoCardless and immediately make PayTo available as an option within their payments tech stack.”
GoCardless General Manager of Australia and New Zealand Luke Fossett, says the GoCardless team are thrilled “to have gone live with ‘the future of payments’.”
He said:
“This is a significant milestone for us as we’ve been huge advocates for PayTo since its design and inception a few years ago. We launched PayTo Uni earlier this year with the goal of playing a significant role in the education of PayTo. What it is, why it exists, and the benefits of this technology. To now successfully be helping merchants in Australia and around the world to easily make PayTo available gives us great pleasure.”
With the conventional Direct Debit system set to be replaced by PayTo in the coming years, Australian businesses are “being urged to educate themselves on PayTo and to integrate it into their payments infrastructure early.”
This will “allow them to gain a competitive advantage while also reaping the platform’s clear benefits, compared to preexisting payment platforms in Australia.”
As noted in the update:
“Our recent ‘State of Pay’ report indicated that 51 per cent of businesses want to reduce payments processed by credit card. Similarly, 52 per cent of consumers would use a new payment technology if it were more secure than what they currently use. The eventual industry-wide adoption of PayTo will allow for many businesses to adjust their approach and payment systems to benefit both themselves and their customers and I think we’ll see some significant industry-wide improvements in the months following the New Payments Platform’s (NPP) April deadline for PayTo integration.”
