AusPayNet, the payments industry’s self-regulatory body, has searched within to find its next chief executive.
 

Andy White, AusPayNet’s Chief Operating Officer, will assume his new role as chief exec on 1 March, with outgoing CEO Dr Leila Fourie announcing her resignation last December.

White previously served as GM for Settlement Services at the Australia Securities Exchange (ASX) before his move to the payments regulator.

AusPayNet Chair, Rob Craig, praised White for his achievements as COO, which included stewardship over “a highly successful member engagement program.”

“Andy’s deep industry knowledge and experience, commitment to innovation and strong standing with AusPayNet’s membership leave him ideally placed to lead our organisation at this time,” Craig said.

White recently led the development of separate industry frameworks to combat card-not-present (CNP) fraud, as well as the enablement of open-loop payments on Australia’s public transit systems, which allows contactless fare collection systems to process payments through credit card or NFC-enabled devices.

White will continue to have his work cut out for him as the regulator combats recurrent CNP fraud, which has emerged as one of the major pain points for the payments sector.

According to a recent AusPayNet newsletter, “CNP fraud now represents almost 85 per cent of all card fraud on Australian cards, and costs the e-commerce industry close to half a billion dollars each year.”

White’s tenure as COO also brought increasing attention to the emergence of non-traditional payments participants, including neobanks Volt Bank and Xinja, as well as the rising bigtech behemoth, Google.

“Payments are changing rapidly globally and are delivering exciting benefits to end consumers,” White said. “As AusPayNet’s CEO, I look forward to working with our staff, our members and wider industry stakeholders to drive real innovation and improvements in Australia’s payments system.”

Formerly known as APCA, The Australian Payments Clearing Association, AusPayNet is the peak body for payments services across the country, managing and developing regulations and standards governing payments clearing and settlement within Australia.

APCA played a foundational role in the creation of the New Payments Platform (NPP), which it span off as a separate company in 2014. In preparation for open banking, AusPayNet proferred a formal submission to the NPP Co requesting greater access for fintechs and third-party initiators of payments to access APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) through the NPP network.