Australia Drafts A2A Overhaul to Support Stablecoin Payments

Overview

• The Account-to-Account Payments Roundtable’s draft vision, released Thursday, puts stablecoins into formal payments planning and came from a group that includes AusPayNet, Australian Payments Plus, the Reserve Bank of Australia and the Treasury.
• The draft says Australia’s bank-to-bank rails may need secure interoperability with tokenized representations of fiat so money can move between accounts and tokens with the same level of trust.
• Policymakers highlight potential gains such as programmable transfers and 24/7 settlement that could speed payroll, invoices and bill payments for households and businesses.
• The document warns of new risks, citing unclear accountability on shared ledgers, expanded data collection and use, and the need to keep systems resilient as they run at all hours.
• Australia is pairing tests with rulemaking, as the RBA’s Project Acacia trials settlement with stablecoins, bank deposit tokens and a pilot wholesale digital currency while the Treasury proposes licensing for digital-asset and tokenized custody platforms.