Zepto says NPP drives A2A growth as payroll shifts

Zepto has published its 2026 A2A Payments Index, showing the New Payments Platform drove 71% of new account-to-account transaction growth in Australia in the year to July 2026. The findings point to a payments market in which NPP and BECS are expanding alongside each other.

Across both rails, Australians moved $21.26 trillion between bank accounts through 5.35 billion transactions in the 12 months to July 2026, according to the index, which combines Reserve Bank data with Zepto platform data. Total A2A value rose 11% over the period, while transaction volume increased 5.7%.

The data suggests real-time payments are creating new use cases rather than simply replacing older bank transfer infrastructure. NPP accounted for 1.99 billion payments, or 37% of all A2A transactions, and carried $2.84 trillion in value, up 26% year on year.

BECS remained the dominant rail by value. Direct entry processed 3.36 billion transactions, representing 62.8% of A2A volume, and carried $18.4 trillion, equal to 86% of total A2A value.

That split points to a dual-rail market rather than a rapid migration from legacy systems to newer real-time networks. The report argues growth on NPP is being driven by payment types and workflows that sit alongside BECS, particularly where immediacy and richer data matter.

PayTo, the NPP-based payment agreement service, posted the strongest growth in the report. It processed 6.75 million payments worth $3.93 billion in the year to July 2026, up 135.9% in volume and 148.6% in value from a year earlier.

Nearly two-thirds of all PayTo activity since its 2023 launch took place in the past 12 months, with 63.9% of cumulative volume and 66.5% of cumulative value recorded during the latest reporting period. That growth comes as the commercial case for A2A payments has been sharpened by recent policy and regulatory changes, including the ban on card surcharges and changes to liability settings around PayTo.

Payroll shift

One of the clearest examples of new A2A demand is payroll and superannuation. Since employers have had to pay super with every pay run rather than quarterly, payroll systems have had to handle a much higher volume of transactions and tighter operational deadlines.

Zepto worked with Employment Hero and OZEDI on HeroClear, a payroll-embedded superannuation clearing product built on its infrastructure. It onboarded 17,000 businesses before the compliance deadline and 26,000 by September 2026.

In the first month of the new payday super regime, 782,000 super contributions worth AUD $660 million were processed through the service. By September, total super contribution value processed had reached AUD $1.8 billion.

"Compliance shouldn't be a second job on top of payroll," said Rob Dunn, General Manager - Payments, Pensions & Benefits at Employment Hero. "Working with Zepto, we built that directly into payroll, combining our platform with their real-time rails so super payments become a by-product of running payroll, not a separate task employers have to chase or worry about."

Zepto's platform processed more than one million super contributions worth nearly AUD $1.1 billion in the first two months of payday super. OZEDI's SuperStream messaging gateway now processes super payments for 40 payroll software companies using Zepto infrastructure.

Matt Cheers, Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder at Zepto, said the industry had moved past debating the broad direction of A2A reform.

"Australia now has a clear vision for A2A payments. But a vision alone does not move a payroll file, resolve a failed supplier payment or make a capability available through every bank channel, business account or software platform that depends on it. The next phase is about embedding real-time, intelligent payments into the software and platforms businesses already use. Reform will be judged not by what we can describe, but by what businesses, employees and consumers can actually rely on," Cheers said.

Fraud checks

The report also highlights the growing focus on payment validation as A2A volumes rise. With payment redirection scams costing Australians AUD $166.8 million in 2025, businesses and banks face greater pressure to identify suspect payment details before funds are sent.

Using data from its validation service, Zepto said 33.1% of account lookups between January and July 2026 returned an actionable signal before payment. For business lookups, that figure rose to 59.9%, compared with 20.1% for individuals, largely because of business name variations.

Mariana Paun, Chief Business Resilience Officer at Zepto, said the figures showed how often businesses needed to verify account details before sending money.

"Every transaction is an act of trust, trust that the account details are correct, that the counterparty is who they claim to be, and that funds will land where they are meant to. When close to sixty per cent of business lookups surface something worth a second look, that trust cannot be assumed, it has to be earned," Paun said.

Tanda has embedded Zepto Validate into onboarding and payroll workflows to identify incorrect bank details before the first pay run.

"One incorrect account name or detail can trigger hours of manual rework, delayed wages and a compliance headache," said Josh Cameron, Co-Founder & Chief Strategy Officer at Tanda. "For a company with a thousand employees, that's a real issue, and an expensive one."