Six months after our inaugural PayTo Index, PayTo adoption and use continues to increase: Zepto has now processed over 1.5 million PayTo transactions, and more than a third of all account-to-account payments in Australia now run through the NPP.
Yet there is still a significant opportunity ahead. Boosting both business and consumer awareness, and, critically, delivering a seamless user experience, remains essential for PayTo’s widespread adoption and success.
This edition of the PayTo Index dives into the retail sector, where PayTo is poised to deliver major benefits. As retailers navigate a challenging market of RBA proposed banning of credit card surcharging and rising consumer expectations for value, speed, and digital convenience, real-time payments offer a chance to reduce costs, accelerate settlement, and support evolution beyond legacy rails. Achieving these benefits will rely on strong partnerships with payment platforms and banks ready to support this shift.
I believe the next 12 months will see PayTo become a new standard for frictionless retail payments, with major merchants like Gumtree, Bing Lee and Temu joining Amazon and going live in the past few months. We also expect to see continued expansion in other sectors, particularly utilities and bill payments.
We’re releasing this report as Black Friday and Cyber Monday approach, a pivotal moment for retail globally, to inspire merchants, banks, and platforms to seize the next frontier in payments: smarter operations, real cost savings, and a next-level customer experience are all within reach via PayTo adoption.
Now is the time for retail and eCommerce to modernise payment strategies, reduce the cost of payments, and unlock the competitive advantage of real-time, account-to-account payments.
Defining Key Terms
PayTo
PayTo is a modern way for businesses to collect payments from their customers’ bank accounts and have them settle in real time, all the time—like an always-on, instant direct debit.
New Payments Platform (NPP)
Launched in February 2018, the NPP is the open-access infrastructure that enables real-time payments across Australia and supports overlay services like PayTo.
PayTo Agreement
A PayTo agreement is an authorisation that allows a business to debit a customer’s bank account for payments like bills, subscriptions or memberships. Unlike traditional direct debits, customers can manage and approve these agreements directly through their bank’s app or online portal.
Account-To-Account Payment (A2A)
A2A payments are conducted electronically, leveraging banking infrastructure and payment networks—like the NPP—to facilitate secure and efficient fund transfers between bank accounts.
Bulk Electronic Clearing System (BECS)
BECS is a legacy payments infrastructure—soon to be replaced by the NPP—used in Australia to process electronic payments, specifically for low-value, bulk transactions. BECS facilitates direct debits, direct credits, and one-off bank transfers.
One-off Payment Agreements
Authorise a single, real-time payment between a customer and a business. Once the payment is made, the agreement ends.
Account-on-File Agreements
Permit a business to store a customer’s bank account details and debit payments as needed, without requiring a new agreement for each transaction—provided the payments fall within the terms of the original agreement.
Recurring Payment Agreements
Allow a business to initiate a series of scheduled real-time payments from a customer’s bank account (e.g. subscriptions or regular bills).
Data Methodology
This report draws on comprehensive, aggregated & anonymised PayTo data from the Zepto platform to provide unique insights. Zepto consistently powers, on average, approximately one in three of all total PayTo payments each month (based on RBA published statistics). While market share fluctuates with key seasonal sales periods, Zepto’s position remains a strong benchmark for understanding PayTo adoption and consumer behaviour trends.
This report is based on comprehensive PayTo Transaction and Agreement data captured from October 2023 through to the end of October 2025. It incorporates both historical and live data across a wide range of industries and payment applications. Current industry verticals in our data set include eCommerce and marketplaces, gaming, financial services, utilities, superannuation, foreign exchange, travel, investment platforms, real estate, education, and loyalty and rewards.
PayTo: The retail
and ecommerce context
Per capita consumption remains flat: The Monthly Household Spending Indicator went up just 0.1% MoM in August 2025, although +5% YoY.
Key sales periods remain significant growth opportunities: EOFY 2025 drove spikes in household goods, department stores and clothing/footwear sales.
When it comes to expectations, 84% of consumers continue to prioritise affordable pricing over anything else when making purchasing decisions.
Digital wallets are dominant and still growing: $201B in Australian wallet transaction value is forecast for 2025. Moreover, 99.3% of customer-bank interactions now occur via digital channels.
The RBA’s proposed surcharge ban presents a seismic shift for merchants, forcing retailers to either increase their prices to cover absorbed payment costs or face lower payment margins.
Looking at PayTo, adoption challenges remain as both merchants and consumers are unfamiliar with its functionality and ROI case. Weak CX journeys largely due to a fragmented banking user experience, significantly impacts conversion.
However, the benefits are clear: reduced fees for both merchant and consumer, improved cash flow via real-time settlement, and even more power to the merchant-consumer relationship which could help reduce instances of ‘friendly fraud’, the biggest fraud type globally.
“For payments innovations like tap-and-go and the NPP to be a success they require widespread adoption. This is commonly referred to by economists as a ‘network effect’, whereby the value of a service increases the more people use it… It can… be challenging to achieve a network effect in private card or account-based payments systems without wide payment industry and public sector support to facilitate a level of coordination.”
Michelle Bullock, Governor of the RBA speaking at Building Bridges in the Digital Economy - Modernising Australia’s Payments System
Benchmark PayTo Data (All Sectors)
Agreements
Created
^45%339,408 in last 6 months
680,693 all-time
Authorised
^108%200,708 in last 6 months
386,468 all-time
Payments
Initiated payments
^48%746,198 initiated payments in last 6 months
1,599,968 initiated payments all-time
Settled payments
^48.9%698,431 settled in last 6 months
1,493,501 settled all-time
Value of total payments settled
$813.17M$304.07M in last 6 months
Agreement By Use Case
One-off
20.4%(excl. insufficient funds)
Account-on-File
69.7%(excl. insufficient funds)
Recurring
9.9%(excl. insufficient funds)
Consumer Growth
Consumers
^97%260,253 consumers used PayTo in last 6 months
528,492 consumer accounts that have used PayTo all-time
Currently Active consumers
155,460currently active consumer accounts
Transactions per active account
^16.47%Transactions Per Active Account: 7
Payment conversion rate by use case
98.91%
Account-on-File
98.75%
One-off
99.2%
Recurring
Over the last 6 months, eCommerce and Retail have demonstrated strong growth, driven by consumer uptake of PayTo’s Account-on-File use case.
Retail/eCommerce Use Case Insights
Payments
Number of payments
^301%305,842 in last 6 months
391,711 all-time
Settled payments
^317%285,340 in last 6 months
362,850 all-time
Payment conversion rate
98.9%(excl. insufficient funds)
Median settlement time
4.94s(seconds)
Settlement value
-44%Average settled value: $105.49 in last 6 months
Average settled value: $160.33 all-time
Median settled value: $44.03 all-time
Total settled value
^133%$30.01M in last 6 months
$58.38M all-time
Agreements
Created
^120%193,587 in last 6 months
296,314 all-time
Authorised
^128%114,982 in last 6 months
175,410 all-time
Agreements by Use Case
Account-on-File
89.88%One-off
10.12%Repeat usage
Consumer return rate
48.66%Median time to return
11 daysSummarising insight
PayTo adoption is growing steadily across the board, with eCommerce and Retail emerging as high growth sectors. The Account-on-File use case in particular is driving adoption of PayTo as a more cost effective alternative to credit and debit card payments, accounting for nine in ten PayTo agreements. It’s clear that consumer awareness is increasing but more can be done from a user experience perspective to drive further adoption.
Greater UX leads to higher conversion
Across banks, higher PayTo agreement conversion correlates with immediate, actionable prompts and shorter authorisation times. Top performers send timely push notifications that deep-link straight to the agreement, and surface a prominent, first-screen banner on app homepages (and browser landing views). Language is concise, calls-to-action are clear, and the path requires minimal taps.
Lower performers bury the task. Some rely on SMS without links, present low-visibility text notices, or require scrolling through multiple menus to locate PayTo Agreements. Links are styled ambiguously, adding friction and uncertainty. These experiences correlate with much longer times to authorise, compounding drop-off.
UX differentiators:
Immediacy, visibility, ease of use, directness, and reduced cognitive load on the user.
Push notifications with direct links to PayTo Agreements are driving conversion.
Case study
Bank C Case Study
Bank C’s implementation of real-time, in-app payment notifications is a gold standard for uplifting the PayTo authorisation user experience.
Outtake
Banks with real-time in-app notifications and clear approval prompts drive best conversion.
UX matters more than cost or technical features: banks with the best UX see 70%+ PayTo conversion rates, those who require conversion via browser see 40%.
Consistent, visible agreement prompts and error messages reduce drop-off.
While the bank and payments experience is critical, retailers also have a role to play ensuring their platform is designed to support and encourage customers through the PayTo process. Retailers know their customers well and therefore need to structure the agreement process to match expectations. Some actions to encourage use can include:
Checkout Positioning: Visibility and ease of selection during checkout strongly influence first-time usage. After the initial PayTo agreement is created, having PayTo as the default payment method Account-on-File drives subsequent transactions.
Incentives and Gamification: Monetary rewards and engaging mechanics significantly accelerate onboarding and repeat payments. PayTo can be promoted during sales periods with small incentives (2–5%) to drive first-time use and habit formation.
Education and Awareness: Clear messaging around PayTo’s benefits helps build user confidence and trust. Provide clear “how to authorise” instructions with screenshots at checkout and in post-purchase communications. Train customer service to assist with bank app authorisation in real time.
Communicate the Benefits: Highlight cost savings and instant settlement benefits for the customer and the brand itself to support stakeholder buy in.
Case study
How an ecommerce brand incentivised and simplified PayTo adoption
A leading ecommerce brand sought to diversify their payment mix to reduce dependence on the major card schemes, manage risk, lower payment costs, and provide consumers more choice
Summarising insight
Banks and payment providers that deliver seamless in-app authorisation experiences drive the highest PayTo conversion rates, while retailers can maximise adoption and loyalty by structuring agreements to fit customer needs, incentivising first use, and providing clear guidance at every step of the payment journey.
Getting started with PayTo
As Australia’s first and only non-bank fintech approved to connect directly to the New Payments Platform (NPP) as a Connected Insitution—and one of the first institutions to offer PayTo—we’ve gone through the hard lessons so you don’t have to.
To implement PayTo as a payment method, merchants must be partnered with a bank, financial institution, or payment service provider. Fortunately, PSPs like Zepto have made this process more seamless than ever.
Contact Zepto today
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