SWIFT, NPP and the future of Australian and cross-border transactions

Swift, NPP and the future of Australian and cross-border transactions

Increasingly, real-time domestic systems are being linked with global networks, through common standards like ISO 20022, to move more seamlessly between domestic and cross-border flows.

Whether retail or corporate, users no longer distinguish between domestic and international payments. They simply expect transactions to be fast, traceable, and predictable end-to-end.

Internationally, SWIFT GPI has already transformed transparency by allowing payments to be tracked end-to-end with visibility on fees and processing along the way.

Joe Kornik: Welcome to the VISION by Protiviti podcast. I’m Joe Kornik, Editor-in-Chief of VISION by Protiviti, where we explore topics being discussed in the C-suite and executive boardrooms worldwide. Today, we are joined by Philippe Depasse, a Sydney-based payments expert and commercial director at SWIFT, where he focuses on advancing real-time payments in Australia. He brings over 15 years of experience in correspondent banking across Europe, Asia, and Oceania. Throughout his career, Philippe has worked with leading financial institutions to develop and enhance payment product offerings, including foreign currency, accounts, international money transfers, and swift technical infrastructure. His work has consistently centered on improving the speed, availability, transparency, and cost efficiency of both cross-border and domestic payments from buy-side and sell-side perspectives. Philippe will sit down with two of my Protiviti colleagues, Director Ruby Chen and Managing Director Rupesh Mahto. Rupesh, I’ll turn it over to you to begin.

Rupesh Mahto: Thank you, Joe. Philippe, good morning and great to have you today for the podcast. How are you feeling today?

Philippe Depasse: Good morning, Rupesh. I’m fine. Thank you. Happy to be here. Thank you for the invite.

Mahto: Lovely. Thanks for having yourself here with us talking about payments today, which is your favorite topic. Let’s crack into it. All our conversation today would be around payments and how payments are emerging in the world. We will be doing a bit of zooming in and out in Australia. Philippe, as you can imagine, real-time payments, it’s no more innovation. It’s no more a topic which was talked about as an innovative technology. It’s now the world of expectation. Every customer, every bank, everybody in the world is expecting real-time payments as a mandate. They should have it. Now, to start off with that, what do you think this modern real-time payments in Australia, such as NPP, as a rail, acts as a strategic platform to improve cash flow, liquidity and fraud risk?

Depasse: Yes, real-time payment systems, they do what they say. They allow individuals, businesses and governments to move money in seconds. That’s the purpose. These systems are using traditional account details or simple aliases via PID. That’s the terminology we use in Australia to make payments—for example, using your mobile phone number or email address to reference the end beneficiary details. These real-time payments are also supported by newer overlay services like PayTo for agreed payment mandates and confirmation of PayU; we can come back to that. Those services help improve the quality of payments upfront while mitigating risks. When I talk about those services, I often refer to this as intelligent frictions, where key information is validated beforehand without interrupting the payment flow itself. Rupesh, from a broader perspective, systems like domestic real-time payment systems globally, including examples such as NPP, new payment platform in Australia, are evolving beyond speed to deliver richer data, stronger risk controls and better liquidity outcomes. For our senior leaders listening to this podcast, I would say the shift is really about viewing these platforms not just as payment rails, but as part of a more intelligent and responsive financial ecosystem. The next challenge here, and it’s also an opportunity at the same time, how these domestic capabilities can be extended across borders. That’s where interoperability becomes critical and where networks like SWIFT play a key role in enabling consistency, security and reach at a global level.

Chen: Hi, Philippe. Nice to be speaking to you again. It’s an absolute privilege to be able to interview you for our podcast.

Depasse: Hi, Ruby.

Chen: In terms of you mentioning the shift to real-time payments, we’d love to hear more about the strategic role and the evolution of new payments platform from SWIFT’s perspective. As we know, you manage the portfolio NPP from SWIFT, and SWIFT has been closely involved with NPP since its early development. From your lens, where does SWIFT fit within this broader ecosystem and how has that role evolved over time?

Depasse: I see what you mean, Ruby, sure. Let me start, maybe, with SWIFT’s world more broadly first. For over 50 years now—it’s already 50 years ago that SWIFT was created in Europe, in Belgium, where I come from—SWIFT has provided the global framework that financial institutions rely on to move values securely and consistently across borders. The focus of SWIFT has always been enabling connectivity, standardization and trust at a global scale. Now, back to your point, Ruby, in markets like Australia, that experience can be applied in collaboration with local infrastructures, such as NPP, the new payment platform here in Australia, which is operated by Australian Payment Plus. Our role there has been to contribute expertise in areas like messaging standards, resilience and interoperability, drawing from what we have learned in cross-border payments. The NPP itself, I think, is a good example of how modern real-time systems are designed to support a wider range of use cases, from low-value retail payments all the way up to high-value wholesale corporate and government transactions. Just to give you a number and to put things back into perspective, the highest largest single payment on NPP was 45.5 billion Australian dollars. It’s just one transaction on that platform. Very important that everything is safe and secure. 

Rather than thinking about ownership of evolution, it’s more accurate to see this as a collaborative progression where you really have domestic infrastructures continuing to evolve and SWIFT here helping to ensure that those systems can connect and scale beyond their borders. As a recent example, we introduced the service of confirmation of PayU, which reflects a broader industry focus on improving trust and reducing fraud. There what’s also particularly interesting is the convergence we’re seeing between those domestic platforms on the one hand and international payments platform on the other hand. Increasingly, real-time domestic systems are being linked with global networks, through common standards, you probably heard about ISO 20022 standards to move more seamlessly between domestic and cross-border flows.

Mahto: Philippe, thanks for that. Payments are not a specific infrastructure which every bank owns. The real-time payments are infrastructure, which is nationally owned, internationally owned, and thus, it requires a lot of collaboration in terms of payments modernization. Can you help me explain and describe what your relationship has been specifically from a SWIFT perspective with various local industry bodies like Australian Payment Plus and other banks in the Australian environment?

Depasse: Yes, Australian Payment Plus is really key in this. It’s a strong collaboration between SWIFT and AP Plus. AP Plus definitely plays a central role in operating and evolving Australia’s domestic payment ecosystem, while SWIFT works alongside as a technology and network partner. SWIFT is here contributing global experience in areas like secure messaging, standards and interoperability. What makes it effective, in my opinion, Rupesh, is the combination of deep local expertise with global connectivity. Here, this helps ensure that as domestic capabilities evolve, they remain aligned with international standards and can integrate more seamlessly into cross-border flows. What does that mean in practice? In practice, that means financial institutions don’t need to think of domestic and international payments as disconnected experiences. Through alignment on standards like ISO 20022 that I mentioned earlier, they can extend capabilities such as real-time processing and richer data across broader payment journeys. Ultimately, it’s about reducing complexity while enabling interoperability across the ecosystem. I think the key takeaway here is the collaboration between AP Plus and SWIFT reduces complexity while giving room for interoperability.

Mahto: Lovely. That makes so much sense because if you imagine AP Plus at the center of this, which is coordinating every effort with all the banks, it makes sense that collaboration should be seamless. Philippe, my next question to you, more as a payments expert, I just want to ask you to go a little deep dive: When AP Plus selected SWIFT as a national and industry-wide confirmation of pay service that helps protect your money, can you explain a bit more on what does that confirmation of PayU service looks like, what it means in a general term, can you decode this a bit for us?

Depasse: Yes, for sure. Maybe I come back to a quote that I’ve actually heard at Sibos Frankfurt last year in October, which was “Speed cannot come at the expense of trust.” This is where confirmation of PayU steps in. You really have here a service that enables, really, everyone to mitigate the risk on that front. Let’s explain what it is. From a global perspective, capabilities like confirmation of PayU are increasingly being shaped by common standards and frameworks that allow trust to be built into payment flows by design. This is directly part of the payment flow. COP, we say cop in Australia, confirmation of pay, is a good example of how the industry is addressing that. It allows users to verify that the account details they have entered match the intended recipient before payment is sent. It’s returning a simple result like match, close match, or no match. After that, it’s up to the payment initiator to decide whether to proceed or not. It’s a simple concept but with impact. It helps prevent scams and misdirected payments at the point of initiation, giving users greater confidence that their money is going to the right place. This service was launched by AP Plus and the Australian bank industry in 2025, mid of last year. Adoption has been strong. It is now live with many financial institutions, reaching millions of accounts, and has already been used millions of times to check payments before they are sent. 

Here, I think with COP, what’s practically telling is the behavioral impact. Hundreds of thousands of payments are actually abandoned after no-match result, including many of the accounts in scope flagged by the Australian Financial Crimes Exchange. It really works. That’s showing how these controls are already helping users avoid potential scams. More broadly speaking, this reflects a shift towards embedding fraud controls earlier in the payment journey rather than relying solely on after-the-fact remediation. It’s really before and not after. It’s before the payment is initiated and go through the network. In other parts of the world, SWIFT has demonstrated the role it can play in enabling confirmation of pay across borders. If I look at Europe, for example, it’s actually mandated across SEPA. SEPA goes for the Single European Payments Area, and SWIFT has been very active there as well. While Australia is still early in its life cycle with this service, similar implementations elsewhere have shown strong impact with very strong results.

Chen: Now, thanks, Philippe. I remember the confirmation of PayU going live last year when I turned on my online banking. I was thinking, “Oh, this is an excellent new feature. I love this.” Yes, I was able to see the match of the name and how frequently there have been payments made to that beneficiary. I think it’s a great new feature that you’ve introduced.

Depasse: It’s really helping. Just to give you an example, Ruby, for people in Australia who purchase a property, of course, they need to deposit a certain amount of money, like 5% or 10% are the rules in Australia. If you don’t have the ability to cross-check and be 100% sure by the end beneficiary detail, you might feel you might take a big risk there while transferring a big amount of money into that beneficiary account. This is where, again, COP has really a lot of value. Before you do, the bank will validate with you if this is exactly the detail you have received and this is the end beneficiary account detail you are supposed to transfer the money to. Like this, everyone is 100% sure of what is happening.

Chen: Yes, exactly. That’s super useful for higher value payments as well. Okay, I want to move into the topic of risk. It’s one of my favorite topics I live and breathe every day. When we come to real-time payments, people are saying that it raises real-time risk. Key to get your thoughts around how is the industry addressing fraud and scam mitigation without slowing payments down?

Depasse: Yes, sure. Definitely, a core priority there, Ruby. Fraud and scams mitigation has become a core priority as real-time payments have scaled. The focus across the industry has been on strengthening detection and prevention capabilities while preserving the speed and convenience of payments. You really always need to come back to, what is the customer experience? Very important. Not try to disrupt that, but to enhance it with the right intention frictions that I was mentioning before. Capabilities such as sanction screening and anomaly detection, for example, are increasingly being embedded directly into payment flows to identify risks in real time. From a SWIFT perspective, this is an area we have worked on extensively across cross-border payments and we’re now seeing similar approaches being applied in domestic real-time environments to strengthen trust while maintaining efficiency.

Mahto: Philippe, this is great, learning more about the new payments platform and the real-time payments platform, how it’s operating in Australia. Look, I personally was involved in some of the NPP launch, which I think was somewhere in 2018. 

Depasse: That’s right. 

Mahto: Yes, now since then, we have seen and heard various terms like PayID and now we are listening to the word PayTo, which is very often coming across to us. It, personally, I would say, has definitely transformed our user experience, which Ruby mentioned as well. In terms of business models or business payment models, where do you see the strategic opportunities emerging with PayTo coming live, or how they’re embedding these real-time capabilities into their ecosystem?

Depasse: Yes, sure. Services like PayID and PayTo are good examples of how modern real-time payment infrastructures are evolving beyond simple transaction processing. Maybe just to explain here because not everyone might be familiar with this technology of PayID and PayTo, we briefly mentioned this earlier, but PayID simplifies how payments are addressed by allowing users to send and receive money using familiar identifiers such as a mobile phone number, email address, or Australian business number, for example, instead of traditional account details. That makes already the experience easier there. Now, PayTo, continuing that, introduces a more structured way to manage payment authorizations giving users greater visibility and control over recurring or pre-approved payments with their banking environment. That’s clearly a payment mandate. 

What’s particularly interesting here is what they represent more broadly. Together, they reflect a shift towards a more intuitive, data-rich, and user-controlled payment experiences. This evolution is made possible by more flexible architectures and richer data standards, which allow payment systems to support a wider range of use cases—from simpler consumer payments to more complex business transactions. This is where we start to see the connection with broader global developments. As expectations continue to rise around speed, transparency and control, again, aligning domestic and cross-border payment experiences becomes really increasingly important. One of the key enablers of this is the migration of ISO 20022, the standards of messaging standards, which allows richer and more structured payment data to travel with each transaction. In practice, this helps improve transparency, supports more efficient reconciliation, and contributes to a more consistent and reliable experience for both banks and end users.

Mahto: Thank you so much, Philippe. I think, fundamentally, what I’ve faced and what I’ve personally seen, I use multiple bank accounts and I use multiple domestic and international bank accounts. The whole experience has been very enriched. In terms of interoperability, which is often mentioned in every payments program you do or payments transformation you do, it’s always talked about but often less achieved. Why do you think in real-time payments, what we are doing matters so much now?

Depasse: Yes, right. Interoperability, that’s a word we use a lot in the financial industry, and I think it’s important to define what it is first. In practical terms, in my opinion, that is the ability of different systems, platforms, or organizations to exchange and use information seamlessly with, really, minimal friction. The reason why it matters a lot, and more than ever actually, is because customer expectations have changed significantly. Whether retail or corporate, users no longer distinguish between domestic and international payments. They just simply expect transactions to be fast, traceable, and predictable end-to-end. At the same time, we’re seeing continued evolution of both domestic and cross-border payment infrastructures. These systems are advancing at different speeds across markets. When you look at different markets in Asia Pacific, for example, some local payment systems are real time, some others are not, so different speeds there according to which market you operate in, which makes connectivity between them increasingly important. You want these markets to be interconnected. The challenge is not about any single system itself but about ensuring they remain connected in a consistent and reliable way as they evolve. 

This is where the industry coordination becomes critical. SWIFT is playing, really, a key role there—aligning on common standards, data and governments so that different infrastructures can interoperate more effectively. We mentioned ISO 20022 standard plays a critical role here by providing a common data language across markets. This allows domestic and cross-border systems to exchange information in a more consistent and predictable way without requiring major redesign of existing infrastructure. Within this context—Rupesh, and I think that’s important to mention this here—SWIFT is working with a voluntary coalition of financial institutions on a new payment scheme framework. That’s an initiative around the world. That initiative is called SWIFT Scheme. It’s designed with the community to improve consistency and predictability in cross-border payments. It’s an initial group of more than 25 banks, expecting already to go live by the end of June this year, so end of June 2026, and this framework introduces shared rules around transparency and predictability across participating institutions. 

What that means in practice is that we are seeing two parallel trends, rising expectations for real-time transparent payments across all channels and then the continued expansion of domestic instant payment systems globally. The opportunity now is to enable these systems to work more consistently together at a global level, so that from a user perspective, payments feel seamless and predictable regardless of where they are initiated or received.

Chen: Yes, no, thanks, Philippe. I think the SWIFT scheme is definitely going to be a game changer and it’ll bring a higher level of consistency, and is generating a lot of interest. At a high level, what would you say is the SWIFT scheme’s significance?

Depasse: Generating a lot of interest, I agree with you, Ruby. This initiative is focused on improving the consistency and predictability, as we said, of the cross-border payment experience. Today, domestic real-time payments in many markets already deliver a high degree of speed and transparency, but now the opportunity is to extend more of those characteristics into cross-border transactions, so that users experience greater certainty regardless of where payments are sent. Again, we come back to the customer experience. The SWIFT Retail Payments Framework is designed to support this by introducing a more consistent set of expectations across participating banks, particularly around certainty of costs, predictable delivery times, and end-to-end visibility of payments, with the aim of delivering a best-in-class experience for cross-border transactions. 

Importantly, this is not about replacing existing infrastructure. We are not trying to create something new here. It’s about enabling banks to build on what they already have and improve the cross-border experience in a gradual and scalable way, so really interconnecting what’s existing. In practice, that means reducing uncertainty around how much a payment will cost, improving predictability of how long it will take, and giving better visibility across the full payment journey. We know that as a payment initiator, it’s very important to be very transparent on the payment journey so that everybody is fully across what is happening. If there is, for example, an FX conversion, if there is an estimated, in terms of timeline, for the end beneficiary account to receive the payment, all these matters for the customer experience. That includes the final stage that I just mentioned where payments are credited to the end beneficiary. 

That’s not just in Australia. We are seeing this evolution alongside the continued expansion of domestic instant payment systems globally. Look at UPI in India, FAST in Singapore, FPS in Hong Kong, which is naturally influencing expectations across payment types. The role of the framework is, therefore, to help align these experiences more closely, so that cross-border payments deliver the same levels of transparency and predictability that users are increasingly expecting.

Chen: Thanks, Philippe. I remember when we used to be a cross-border payment product manager colleagues in the past, there was just not much level of transparency when the payment leaves Australia, for example. 

Depasse: That’s right.

Chen: We didn’t know exactly how much the intermediary banks would charge or the beneficiary banks and how much would be left over when the actual recipient receives the money. I think this is going to be a real game changer. I’m really looking forward to seeing more commitment across more banks. Just with all of that you’ve mentioned, how does all of this translate into better customer experience, particularly when linking NPP with international payments and tools like GPI?

Depasse: Yes, GPI is definitely key in this as well. SWIFT GPI—that’s a SWIFT initiative that has been launched a few years ago—basically, first, the acronym GPI goes for Global Payments Innovation—that’s the modern standard for cross-border payments, making international transfers faster, more transparent, and trackable end-to-end. When you initiate a payment, you have what we call a UETR, a unique end-to-end transaction reference number, and that gives you, really, a tracking end-to-end of that payment, wherever it might go anywhere around the world. This is giving you real-time status updates and confirmation when funds reach the beneficiary. You’re 100% sure with this tracking about the payment status and when it hits the end beneficiary account. 

Coming back to ISO 200022, that plays, again, an important role because it enables richer and more structured payment data to flow through the transaction chain. Maybe just to talk a little bit about those standards, we have enriched the standards. That means the fields within the payment message itself is enhanced. It’s enriched. You can put more information there in a more structured way that can be automatically read by the environment of the banks processing that payment. This supports more consistent tracking, more efficient reconciliation, and ultimately, a more seamless end-to-end customer experience. The way I see it is that customer experience is really improved when these initiatives really come together. It’s not just one thing on the one hand. It’s all these initiatives through scheme, including GPI, including the community of banks working together— when those initiatives come together, it’s really improving the customer experience. Achieving a more consistent low-friction experience is a key driver here. Internationally, SWIFT GPI has already transformed transparency by allowing payments to be tracked end-to-end with visibility on fees and processing along the way. Now, we’re seeing that level of visibility extend further, including confirmations of credit and even tracking in cases where payment need to be returned, which helps remove some of the uncertainty customers traditionally face with cross-border transactions. 

For corporate customers, for example, this improves liquidity management and reconciliation. Cash flow is very important to corporate. Liquidity management, sometimes intraday liquidity management, that matters a lot, so this is clearly something helping there. For retail customers, more on the low-value payments, clearly, it builds trust because you can track your payment end-to-end at any point of time. All in all, it also reduced the complaint volumes, as you can imagine, because you can actually, yourself, track the status of that payment without the need of asking someone to give you the status of that transaction. Operational friction, reputational risk, these are some of the items being addressed by GPI, all while improving competitiveness.

Mahto: Very, very insightful, Philippe. I think some of these capabilities, which are now possible with real-time payments, is a very unique way to look at businesses and how we operate in the payments world. Now, switching gears, Philippe, I’m struggling these days to talk about future horizon. I don’t know how big the horizon of the future is, whether we’re looking at three years, five years, or six months. 

Depasse: Many, many years. 

Rupesh Mahto:    The things are changing so fast and the horizons are cutting across quite quickly. Looking ahead, in terms of real-time payments, NPP, SWIFT, and its continued evaluation, continued investments, and where the innovations are happening—personally, Philippe, what are you most excited about in this new horizon? Where do you think this new wave is going to take us?

Depasse:  Yes, looking ahead, it’s indeed interesting to see how it’s going to evolve. We have real-time capabilities but we also need to look at what payments are actually secure on that real-time platform already, and beyond retail use cases into more like the corporate space, if you look at NPP in Australia, for example—and that’s actually valid in other markets as well around the world—we’re already seeing increasing interest in areas such as payroll, supplier payments, tax, pension, and invoicing. That’s moving towards real-time settlement over time. It’s not just retail payments, it’s really payments that are more strategic for corporates and higher in value. They’re also coming to the real-time platform. These are natural progressions, if I may say, as infrastructure matures and confidence as instant payment systems increases. In Australia, domestic real-time payment systems continue to demonstrate how infrastructure can support this transition. We have a clear roadmap, SWIFT and AP Plus, with new use cases emerging as adoption expands across the ecosystem. 

That’s not something SWIFT is doing in silos. We are doing the SWIFT and AP Plus together. Obviously, we are involving the major actors of the market to make sure what we do, what we deliver is perfectly aligned with the expectations and the experience. Again, coming back to the experience, what is the customer experience necessary here? What do we want to provide? How long should that be? What is the right level of intelligent frictions? That’s really exciting in terms of how we can bring that roadmap into this environment and bring everything to the next level. 

From a broader perspective, what’s most exciting here to me is not any single market or system. Again, it’s not just about NPP. It’s the global direction of travel. When we talk about payments, we are talking about payments that are faster, more data-rich, and more seamlessly connected across domestic and cross-border environments, and that’s really the focus today. This is where SWIFT’s focus remains, on enabling that connectivity, ensuring that as domestic systems evolve, they can continue to interoperate within a consistent global framework. 

Ultimately, Rupesh, what I would say is the opportunity ahead is about building a payments experience that feels unified to the user. That’s regardless of whether the transaction is domestic or international, retail or corporate.

Chen: Thank you so much, Philippe. Wow, we covered so much ground. We talked from SWIFT’s strategic role in the evolution of NPP, to collaboration with Australia Payments Plus, risks, fraud, scam mitigations, interoperability and global payment trends, the SWIFT scheme, cross-border experiences and also your views on the future horizon. That’s a massive coverage and range and I would have loved to continue chatting, but I hate to say that we have come to a close. Thank you so much for sharing your strategic insights into how NPP and SWIFT are shaping the future of payments, not just in Australia, but globally.

Depasse: Thank you, Ruby. Indeed, a lot of interesting initiatives happening in Australia and around the world. SWIFT is very active with the SWIFT scheme strategy and I’m excited about what’s coming. A couple of publications will be done in the next few months to understand the outcome of those shortlisted 25-plus banks working on this as we speak. I’m looking forward to the result of that initiative in the broader financial services ecosystem. Thank you for your time, Rupesh and Ruby. It was really a pleasure to be part of this podcast.

Mahto: Philippe, before we close, I’d just like to say thanks from my side too. Thanks for making this time. I’m quite excited to talk to you in the future about other initiatives in payments like stablecoins, blockchain, and everything else that we haven’t.

Depasse:  Digital assets.

Mahto: Digital assets. Thank you so much.

Depasse: Thank you, Rupesh. It was really a pleasure to be part of the podcast. Thank you.

Chen: Thank you. Thanks again. We’ll now hand back to Joe for closing remarks.

Kornik: Thanks, Ruby. Thanks, Rupesh. Thanks, Philippe. Thank you for listening to the VISION by Protiviti podcast.