Oz banks gear up for real-time payments system

24 hour banking, 7 days a week, instantaneous transactions in real-time, regardless of weekends and public holidays. The only time that you will not be able to execute a transaction is when there is downtime due to technical issues and regular maintenance. Instantaneous real-time transactions, either through a mobile phone, iPad, laptop or desktop computer, is essential for efficient transactions from mobile and computer based payments, which are between banks, banks and individuals, banks and businesses, businesses and individuals, between businesses and between individuals. The cashless society is coming, and no amount of scaremongering is going to stop it. 

Kudos to Australia's banks for initiating an FPS-like payment system. 

Despite the proliferation of electronic payment systems like FPS, SEPA, TARGET2, NEFT, Expedited Payments in the last five years, the total amount of currency in circulation has only gone up. Partly because people might have returned to cash and partly because a lot of new people are "coming into money" and the usual sequence for a lot of people is money > spending > banking > cashless methods of payments.

Some 50 years ago, a Lufthansa aircraft flying from Frankfurt to New York and carrying millions of dollars back to New York from abroad unloaded all that currency at a Lufthansa-owned warehouse in JFK, from where most of it - estimated at US$ 6M - was looted in what was then the largest cash robbery in the American history. I was tickled no end to read that a very similar heist took place just a couple of weeks ago, only that the airline involved in the recent incident was SWISS, flying from Zurich to New York. So much for cashless society, which I'm sure is not going to happen even after 190 years.