FinTech Australia's Podcast

The episode contains a handful of genuinely non-obvious observations - BECS's travel rule exemption, Australia's surprisingly high card-fraud rate, and ERP integration as a PayID bottleneck - but is padded with substantial high-level agreement, repetition, and platitudes like 'exciting times ahead' that dilute the useful signal-per-minute ratio.

“I don't know how many People realize that when the travel rule was introduced across Australia, BECS was exempted from that. I've always assumed that exemption was on the basis that the powers that be were told BECS is going to be turned off in 2030”

“In card payment processing, Australia's got one of the highest fraud rates after the US”

Tom's linkage of the BECS travel-rule exemption to an implicit sunset assumption is a genuinely fresh and first-principles observation; most other content recycles familiar NPP-is-world-class, EU-vs-US, and consumer-education talking points that circulate widely in Australian fintech circles.

“I've always assumed that exemption was on the basis that the powers that be were told BECS is going to be turned off in 2030. So if it's not being turned off, presumably we've got to add in all that extra data into the BECCS fields pretty soon”

“Confirmation to pay has really changed the landscape a lot in Australian domestic account to account payments”

Tom brings credible practitioner depth - CPO with 15 years across 18 countries in payments scale-ups and real Azupay client references - while Michael represents a genuinely significant global infrastructure player pursuing an Australian restricted ADI; however Michael self-identifies as a sales leader rather than a technical or policy operator, which caps the analytical ceiling.

“I've had about 15 years now in scaling up payments related fintechs”

“our CEO Prajit Nanu um uh, uh released that we actually have now become, started the process of our own restricted adi um journey with apra”

There are useful named specifics - Optus as a client, Nium's 2015 Australian launch, PayNow-UPI and PromptPay bilateral arrangements, Project Nexus, the 'two ADIs' claim - but hard numbers are nearly absent beyond 'tiny fractions of 1%' and the conversation relies heavily on vague assertions about cost, adoption, and fraud without citing transaction volumes, dollar figures, or published data.

“There are only really, if you look at it and you guys may disagree on this point, two ADIs that are really supporting the fintech industry with access”

“we've seen in Singapore the tie up with the UPI paynow and upi. That bilateral arrangement has certainly uh, improved and uh, given greater access to P2P payments for those two corridors. We've seen it with um, the PayNow and um, uh, prompt pay in Thailand”

The host demonstrates one meaningful pushback - challenging Tom's 'limited players' framing on resilience grounds - and lands a few decent follow-up probes ('is that cost-driven?'), but most questions are long, compound, and leading, many claims pass unchallenged, and the overall dynamic is a collegial panel rather than a substantively interrogative interview.

“Can I just maybe challenge that a little bit? Because if you have a limited number of infrastructure players and we are moving into payments being really critical national infrastructure...is there not a risk around continuity”

“ah, is that a cost driven? What do you think is the big issue here?”