Getting ready for life beyond BECS: Key actions for banks

With the retirement of the Bulk Electronic Clearing System (BECS), nearly 90% of Australia’s retail account-to-account payments will shift to the New Payments Platform (NPP), representing 3.5 billion transactions annually, worth more than $17 trillion. While banks may not be the architects of this change, they are central to enabling it, driving the migration and ensuring the safe and successful transformation of payments. Their role is critical in preventing disruption to their customers and maintaining stability across the broader economy.  Governor Michele Bullock’s speech at the Bradfield Oration on Friday, 24 October 2025, further emphasised the crucial role banks play in driving payments modernisation and the importance of this transformation for Australia to remain globally competitive.

The major banks will set the tone for the industry by establishing standards, reducing fragmentation and creating a clear path for institutions to follow.

A successful migration will depend on your early and decisive action as a banking leader to:

1. Actively engage with industry as the migration path develops

• Shape the path forward: This means actively contributing to industry development, supporting regulators and policymakers achieve the required outcomes, and helping to define aligned milestones and dependencies that will enable this migration
• Balance collaboration with competition: Australian Payments Plus (AP+) and AusPayNet have been granted exemptions to collaborate, creating space for banks to work together on standards while still innovating their own offerings. A coordinated response is essential to ensure an interoperable and scalable outcome that protects the integrity of the payments system while delivering public value
• Align internal and external plans: Track industry developments closely to ensure your organisation’s own development and migration roadmaps are aligned, realistic and designed to manage external dependencies

2. Review your payments architecture and capabilities

The migration is an opportunity to solve existing challenges in the payments journey by uplifting the payments ecosystem. Now is the time to understand what needs to be introduced, changed or removed to support NPP payments and products at scale across current BECS journeys and clients. 

Baringa’s Retail Banking Survey of 4,000 customers and 400 executives across the UK and US highlights the urgency of uplifting payments architecture given that 68% of UK and US banking executives admit their technology architecture actively hinders them from serving customers effectively.

When banks are considering the shape of fit-for-future architecture, the discussion should include the capabilities that will be needed in 5 or even 15 years’ time. Questions could include:

• What will it take to modernise your payments architecture to handle data requirements, additional volume of payments and broader uplifts? If you aren’t API enabled and cloud based (i.e., set up to scale), will you innovate inhouse or partner to get there?
• How should transaction monitoring and fraud controls evolve with the move to real-time?
• Can you deliver cross-border interoperability to meet customer expectations that money will move instantly across borders?
• Do you need to get ready for stablecoins, which could become mainstream faster than expected?

3. Put customers at the centre

One of the biggest risks in the BECS migration is treating it as a technical exercise, overlooking the opportunity to improve your customers’ experience. End-user impact will be a key driver of success. It’s essential to understand the benefits customers can realise, alongside the core functionality and transition pathways needed to support them through the change.

Customer loyalty is hard-won and easily lost. Our research shows that one-third of banking customers globally have switched providers in the past five years. This highlights the importance of designing migration strategies that not only minimise disruption but actively improve customer outcomes.

As well as supporting consistency in the NPP rollout, banks can protect and enhance the customer experience throughout the change by:

• Minimising the impact on customers: Banks have the option to manage much of the change, particularly around batch payments and existing direct debit migrations, helping to minimise disruption for customers. However, some level of change is often preferred by customers to fully realise the benefits that real-time payments can offer. Regardless of the approach, customers will need clear communication and consistent support throughout the migration journey.
• Phasing in change thoughtfully: The ‘why’ behind the transition is to deliver faster, richer and safer services to customers. Banks need to consider who to target first, in what sequence, and over what timeframe. In some cases, you will need align your transition or uplift plans with customer timelines to ensure they can realise the benefits of real-time payments when it matters most.

4. Keep resilience front and centre

Any payments transition only delivers value if it is reliable, safe and secure. While new journeys and features tend to be more visible, it’s the foundational work behind the scenes which ensures success. This includes processing high volumes of payments efficiently, preventing fraud preventing fraud through effective transaction monitoring, and managing failures or outages swiftly to minimise impact on users. Building trust throughout the migration is critical. As such banks need to ensure:

• Sufficient processing capacity: Your organisation must be equipped to handle the required processing volumes to meet client needs. This aligns with expectations from Australian Payments Plus as scheme operators but also cascades down to individual banks and their clients. Whether it’s processing large files quickly or managing peak periods, the industry must uphold SLAs and deliver reasonable processing timeframes.
• Real-time fraud and transaction monitoring: With the shift to real-time payments comes the need for equally responsive security measures. Fraud prevention and transaction monitoring must operate in real time to ensure payments reach the right recipients.
• Strengthened operational resilience: Banks carry significant responsibility in managing an increasingly complex cyber and technology landscape. This includes mitigating third-party risks, maintaining continuity and communication plans for extended disruptions, and carefully managing technology risks throughout and beyond the migration, with clear escalation pathways in place.

Why is action so urgent?

2030 sounds distant. But for banks, the level of change across systems, processes and customer journeys will take years to execute and should be prepared well in advance of the BECS decommission. Payments are a fundamental service. Any changes require careful planning, robust testing and a phased rollout, all of which take time.

Also, customer expectations are already shifting. If their banks can’t provide real-time, data-rich, frictionless services, they’ll turn to providers who can. As our survey shows, customers expect more,  and they’re willing to move to get it.

Today, the top drivers of bank switching are security, ethics and digital experience.
The BECS migration presents a golden opportunity for banks to deliver provide a seamless digital experience. But institutions need to act now to protect their customers and reputations, while ensuring a smooth transition.  

Baringa brings deep global payments expertise, including our experience in supporting the UK through its payments modernisation journey.  Combined with our local knowledge across Australian financial services, government and public sector and industry, as well as our capabilities in technology transformation and risk management, we’re uniquely positioned to support your organisation through this change. 

If you’d like to explore about how your organisation can best navigate the BECS transition, please get in touch.