Ecommerce has become the front line of Australia’s fraud problem. Card-not-present transactions carry the highest exposure to rising fraud, chargeback costs, and eroding trust signals, and those losses scale directly with volume while margins remain thin.
In this environment, real-time, account-to-account payments are not an abstract innovation. For ecommerce in Australia, they are a practical lever to selectively shift high-risk and high-friction flows into more controlled channels.
Australia’s payment infrastructure has moved well beyond experimentation. The New Payments Platform (NPP) was built to deliver always-available, data-rich payments across the digital economy, and it is now doing that at national scale.
In the 12 months to October 2025, the NPP processed around 1.82 billion real-time transactions (~14% uplift year on year) and now carries more than one-third of Australia’s account-to-account payment volume. On average $7 billion moves through the platform every day, with both transaction volumes and values continuing to accelerate. For ecommerce leaders, these are not early-adoption statistics. They are signals that real-time rails have become core infrastructure.
This shift in status matters because it changes the board-level conversation. When a platform processes trillions in annual value and billions of transactions, the question is no longer whether it will matter. It is when and how to engage and whether continuing to wait is reducing risk or quietly adding to it.
For ecommerce and retail, there is a clear answer. In our view, this sector sits in the “Act Now” category, not because of technology fashion, but because the risk is already present in everyday payment flows.
AusPayNet’s FY25 data reports total card-related fraud of $854 million on spending of $1.2 trillion, with card-not-present (CNP) fraud accounting for approximately 87% of all card fraud. Calendar-year 2024 statistics show total card fraud rising to $913 million, driven by overseas CNP fraud. Nearly one in ten Australians experienced card fraud in 2024–25.
These are not abstract trade-offs. They shape consumer behaviour, drive regulatory expectations, and define the customer protection narratives retailers are increasingly expected to articulate.
Real-time account-to-account payments do not remove fraud risk entirely, but they can change the equation.
The decision at board level is not whether to replace cards universally at checkout. It is about selectively shifting high-risk or high-friction flows where fraud cost already counters the convenience of card payments. In other words, leadership is not defined by who moves first. It is defined by who moves well.
“Real-time payments succeed when they are designed into high-confidence use cases where speed and certainty already matter, not when they are simply added as one more optional button at checkout.”
— Tom Rundle, Chief Product Officer, Azupay
The operational model for moving well is also clear. International experience, and Australia’s own trajectory, support a pilot-to-scale pattern. The first step is to identify a high-confidence use case with existing operational pain: for example, high-value orders prone to chargebacks, or a defined repeat-customer segment where trust is already strong but card costs are high.
The second is to design the experience deliberately, with clear “pay direct from your bank” positioning, strong trust cues, and minimal unnecessary choice that would encourage customers to default to the familiar.
The third is to launch in controlled cohorts: one checkout journey, one channel, one customer segment. That containment limits operational blast radius and protects the brand while still generating real-world learning. Crucially, boards should insist that outcomes are measured in terms they already use to assess risk and performance: fraud exceptions, payment failures, reconciliation effort, customer support contacts, and dispute volumes.
For ecommerce and retail business leaders, the real risk is not that legacy payment rails will change; they will. The risk is that the longer organisations wait, the harder it becomes to absorb that change in a controlled way. Capabilities, governance confidence, process adaptation, and operational readiness all compound over time. Deferred learning does not simply delay cost. It concentrates it into a shorter, less forgiving window.
Over the next 12 to 24 months, ecommerce leaders have a genuine window of opportunity. Real-time rails are mature, fraud and cyber threats are escalating, and card-not-present exposure is only likely to increase as volumes grow. This is the moment to tackle the worst fraud and chargeback pain with a controlled, account-to-account option before rising fraud costs and customer scepticism force more abrupt change later.
The organisations that navigate this best will not be those that switch everything overnight, but those that ensure they are never forced to move fast without the advantage of prior experience.
As real-time payments accelerate, understanding the landscape matters more than ever. Explore insights and thought leadership that decode the complexity and spotlight opportunity.
Discover how Azupay cuts costs
compared to cards, BNPL, EFT, and cheques.
Speak with our team to map out the fastest way to go live – direct or via a partner platform.
