Sept. 23, 2025

Navigating NPP and Payday Super: what super funds need to know

Navigating NPP and Payday Super: what super funds need to know

#7. Co-hosts Sarah Penn and Neil chat with Marnie Ryan, head of product innovation and enablement at AP+ (formerly NPP Australia).

Highlights

  • NPP and Superannuation: From 1 July 2026, funds must accept real-time payments via the New Payments Platform (NPP)—mandatory, and separate from Payday Super legislation.
  • Modernising Payments: Transition away from BECS is set for 2030. Super funds need to get ready to shift from batched, delayed payments to instant, always-on transactions.
  • Reconciliation Revolution: NPP upgrades solve historic problems with payment reference numbers, making reconciliation faster and easier—especially important for super contributions.
  • Pilot Programs in Action: Leading funds and clearinghouses are already piloting real-time payments, so the future is now.
  • Fraud and Security: New features like confirmation of payee and PayID add extra layers of trust and validation for fund rollovers and member withdrawals.
  • Getting Ready: Execs should engage tech, ops, and employer services teams now. Start talking to your bank and payment partners to understand your platform readiness.
  • Member Experience: Real-time payments create new member expectations. Faster clearing and instant notifications can improve trust and encourage members to check contributions more often.
  • Innovation Pipeline: Expect more streamlined experiences with products like PayTo, reducing manual entry and making top-ups or pension drawdowns seamless—24/7, even at year-end crunch time.

Key takeaway: Don’t wait for legislation—engage with your banking and payment providers now to be NPP-ready before the 2026 deadline.

Guest: Marnie Ryan


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Your Cohosts

Sarah Penn

Sarah Penn is the CEO and founder of Mayflower Consulting, an Australian financial services consultancy specialising in product governance, PDS management, and product operating model design. Her team works with super funds, fund managers, and investment platforms across Australia.


Neil Benson

Neil Benson is the global chief product officer at ChandlerCX, where he leads a team focused on intelligent customer messaging for regulated organisations, including superannuation funds, banks, insurers, utilities and public sector organisations. His AI startup, Novagentic, was acquired by ChandlerCX in February 2026.


Mentioned in this episode:

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00:00 - Untitled

00:12 - Introduction to Super and Industry Insights

00:33 - Introduction to Real Time Payments and Superannuation

13:29 - Navigating the Future of Payment Systems

25:57 - Innovations in Superannuation Contributions

29:22 - Transitioning to New Payment Systems in Superannuation

Neil Benson

Welcome to that super show, the podcast where we talk all things super from the inside. I'm Neil Benson, CEO of Superware.

Sarah Penn

And I'm Sarah Penn, CEO of Mayflower Consulting. Each week we unpack what's changing in the industry, what funds are wrestling with and how tech and regulation are shaping the landscape.

Neil Benson

Sometimes we bring in expert guests, but mostly it's just us having a real conversation about how super is working and what could make it even better.

Sarah Penn

Let's get into it. Hi, everyone. Sarah, Pen. Welcome to that Super Show.Today, Neil and I are joined by Marnie Ryan from AP plus to talk all about the big changes coming to Super Payments in Australia. We cover what the shift to real time payments means for funds, employers and members and why July 2026 is a date you need to know. Let's dive in.We have Marnie Ryan here today from AP Plus. Why don't we start with you introducing yourself?

Marnie Ryan

Thanks, Sarah. My name is Marnie Ryan. I'm the head of Product Innovation and Enablement in Business Payments at.We're looking after the development or innovation on the new payments platform or the npp, which is our real time payments infrastructure in Australia. My team look after a number of things and one of those is to help mobilise superannuation payments onto the NPP.And we've been working on that since probably about 2018, 2017, I would say. So it's been a long journey.

Sarah Penn

So you were just saying before we started recording that from 1st July 2026, super funds need to be able to accept NPP payments.

Marnie Ryan

Yeah.

Sarah Penn

What does that mean for a Super fund? Let's go back a few steps because this is not an area I know much about.

Marnie Ryan

Well, maybe we go back a few years.

Sarah Penn

Go on, then.

Marnie Ryan

So the NPP launched in 2018, February in 2018.At that point in time, there are a couple of issues that were uncovered with funds and one of those things was the payment reference number, or the prn, as everyone, you know, the acronym that everyone loves in super wasn't coming through in some cases for some of the funds, and so they weren't actually able to reconcile them. And that has sort of played out a little bit because in some cases, you know, the PRN might not be carried straight through cs.Well, as part of the issues that they uncovered, I suppose, and the reconciliation issues and the inability to allocate those to funds, the ATO with the industry worked together to publish a guidance note about NPP, guidance note 51. And guidance note 51 said, don't use NPP. And there was this massive sort of backlash against us, I will be really honest.And so it wasn't expected a by the industry or the banks at that point in time because we were really hoping that NPP would be used for a number of these payments because there is value in terms of real time transfer.So what we saw at that point in time was a lot of the funds shut the door and said actually we don't want to take those payments anymore or we're not even accepting them, so don't make our account available to even get an NPP payment.So over the years we've worked with the industry and you know, npp when before we became AP plus where we, we came together with EFTPOS and bpay MPP in a standalone company, we stood up our own superannuation working group and we worked with all the industry to try and uncover and unpick what that meant and what were the issues that they were seeing with that lack of reconciliation. And so we've over the years worked through those issues to get to a point where we understand them.We've really clearly articulated with the banks what they need to do.But also because they're the major player in this, they're actually carrying the information that comes through and they're actually carrying a number of the. Well, they translate up in statements by those banks, by those funds. Sorry.So that's basically what we've done over, I was going to say seven years now to us to get to this point in the last couple of years we've worked really closely with the ato, you know, Flag and Treasury, I would say, you know, flagging that there would be a need to move to NPP ultimately and maybe if I sort of put the context of why that's really important now who own the BEC Scheme, which is the bulk electronic clearing scheme, they have effectively said that there's a retirement date that's coming.

Neil Benson

Oh, I didn't know that the targeted.

Marnie Ryan

Date for that is 2030 at the moment.So and I count it down in months now and my, you know, everyone gets quite stressed about that and you know, maybe that, I mean it's a target date at this point in time.But what we want to do is get to, you know, really moving to a more modern payment system and that's across the board for the for payments in Australia.And we want to move to an account to account vision where payments are made between account to account where we can see that there's some sort of digital Transformation or at least you know, you're including it in, in processes that you do as part of your natural business processes. And so that's where we're moving towards.And so with this sort of impending date or the closure of beccs, it means that processes like the, and you might be familiar with this, but an ABA file, so if you're a small business person, you might run your payments through your accounting software and then when you get to ready to pay those supplier payments, you download it or your super, you download it and then you load it up.

Neil Benson

Familiar with that?

Marnie Ryan

Yeah, yeah, yeah, everyone's very familiar with that, that process, that sort of batch processing and that thinking of that batch processing is changing. And so that's why working with the ATO and the super industry, we've tried to say this is coming, let's start preparing.These things take time and years. You know, we've been in discussions for this long. We now need to make sure that we've got, you know, the next four or five years set up for success.So when we, we started this and we thankfully, I will say to the ato, have included us in the payday super working groups and technical working groups and all of those types of things. So the industry's really tried to learn from us and, and see if we can sort of help them bring them along.And it's been amazing in terms of their support. Some of the conversations have been a bit spicy, I would say that.And we have, you know, received some negative pushback and feedback in terms of capability. But I think from our perspective, you know, we've progressed.And as a result of that, the ATO acknowledged that the industry has supported that NPP should be available on 1st July 2026. And a letter has been sent to all the trustees of the funds.

Neil Benson

So Marnie, what I'm hearing there is the move towards real time payments for employers to make contributions to super funds and other payments within the superannuation system.

Marnie Ryan

Right, yeah.

Neil Benson

Okay. What should funds be doing now to prepare themselves for the introduction of real time payments?I think of the different teams inside a fund, the operations team, employer services. I imagine they're going to get a few more phone calls about more frequent payments as Payday super comes online as well.And then you've got the tech teams trying to make sure that their systems are up to scratch. What can those folks be doing today to Prepare for that 1st of July deadline?

Marnie Ryan

So there are, and there will be testing processes that need to happen because the contributions file and the message is changing. So there's a whole process that is being undertaken in terms of conformance testing. So the industry's doing that. That's not really within our remit.That's obviously the super industry.But from a payments perspective, our view is that you should be talking to your bank, you should be talking to the gateways and clearinghouses who are actually making these payments to you. The ATO is actually lent into this.And because the first of July obviously is the mandatory date next year to allow MPP payments, they're actually publishing, and we raised this as part of the stakeholder management sort of discussions. They're publishing a list of those who are early adopters and those that are willing to receive it early.So you can actually test it, you can see if, if you want to pilot it, you can actually adopt the npp. It's been really funny, though.We actually think that there are some organizations who are naturally receiving NPP payments but actually don't even realise it.

Neil Benson

So let me unpick that a little bit, because if I.From my business bank account, if I make a payment using a BSB and account number, sometimes it seems to take a few days and my assumption there is that's going over the BECS system. Other times it goes instant and it's received by the. By the recipient within a couple of seconds. So that must be using npp.But as a person using the bank says, I have no idea what payment platform is clearing that transaction. And it's not like PayID in my retail bank account where I choose to send a payment over Osco and. And it.I know it's going to be real time because I'm using pid. It seems to be quite transparent at a retail level.

Marnie Ryan

Yeah. Consumer level. Yeah, yeah. And. And so we. We own all of those products that you talked about. They're part of the NPP and we've got certain obligations.If you're in a retail channel, the OSCO logo has to come up to tell you that it's been. That it's gone down that path.We don't have that in some of those business banking channels at the moment, so you can't see the transparency of when it. It's gone through or not. And that, you know, they're some of the things that we're working through at the moment for npp.And what does that look like in the future?Because notifications would be amazing to sort of tell you that that's actually landed, especially for employers, you know, if they're paying a clearinghouse they want to know what day did I pay it?Because especially with payday super, it becomes critical for them to actually understand the date that they were a they paid the employer employee, but also when they made that transfer to the fund.

Sarah Penn

It's all very fuzzy at the moment as a small business owner and a supplier, funnily enough, we got two notifications this morning that two customers have paid us money. That's wonderful. But I have no idea when it's going to hit. Like it might be there now, might be there in three days time.I don't know when the notification lines up with when someone's actually pressed a button at their end. I've really got no idea. It makes it very fuzzy.

Marnie Ryan

And that's the challenge for us at the moment. We've got, we want to make sure that the accounts are all reachable. So the first path should be that you choose the real time one.And that happens with some of and ironically some of the smaller institutions have lent in wholeheartedly and have been there since day one because it's just easier for them to all put it onto the one rail and they've really lent into it. So if you've got a you bank with a smaller credit union, they usually or typically will put them through the npp, whereas some of the banks.Because if you go back to my comment around the account reach and those super funds saying no, I don't want this account to be available for npp, that's where it will actually downgrade onto the old batch system. And so that's why it takes a couple of days.

Neil Benson

So we're hoping that employers are making contributions fortnightly or monthly in line with their payroll.The number of transactions is going to balloon, I don't know, three, five, ten times as many as today where most a lot of contributions are quarterly. Is the network going to be able to handle that volume because the error rates are going to obviously balloon as well?Or does the increased error rate give us a chance to catch those errors earlier and fix them so that future payments go through without those errors in them? I'm curious to see how it's all going to pan out. Are we expecting some kind of disaster July and August next year?Is it going to go really smoothly even though the payment volumes have massively, massively increased?

Marnie Ryan

And maybe that's why I'm encouraging people to start and test it now and do that little pilot look.I would say in terms of capacity and because of that retirement effects, the NPP is actually taking all of that volume and will sort of look to the future to make sure that all payments that are on account, to account come to us. And so that means that not only are we taking superannuation, we're taking payroll, we're taking supplier payments.All of those business transactions, they're billions of transactions in reality, and they're direct debits, they're all a variety of payments in the, I suppose the pie or the percentage of allocated transactions to superannuation, it's probably sitting about 200 million now, if that, you know, even five times will get us up to a billion. And in that point, we know that that will actually be well within our capacity because we're aiming for 6 billion transactions.NPP currently is growing 20% year on year.And so our constant way in which we have to actually prepare for the next phase of growth is that we are constantly looking for capacity and making sure that we've got that covered.

Neil Benson

Right.So although from a superannuation perspective, the number of transactions is going to increase substantially, superannuation as a percentage of all your transactions is very small. So, yeah, so it's not really going to stress out. You might just need to put a little bit more memory in some of your computers and you'll be fine.

Marnie Ryan

It'll be a nice little bleep, but be good.

Neil Benson

Yeah, okay. Marnie, we've been talking a lot or thinking a lot about contributions from employers into members accounts.But what about withdrawals, helping members get their money faster when they, you know, draw a pension or have some other reason to withdraw money from their superannuation account? How can funds leverage MPP to do that?You know, we've, we want to make sure it's secure, it's going to the right person, they're identified where they're providing the right bank details. And that's not always easy for members to do, it seems.But we call some innovations now, like, I don't know what it's called, whenever you put in somebody's BSBN account number now, it tells you the name of payee. Yeah, confirmation. Yes. So can funds use those kinds of innovations to make sure the money gets to members quicker as well?

Marnie Ryan

And I think it's been one of our priorities, you know, when we've had discussions with the industry, fraud is at top of mind and one of the products. So there's many ways in which we can actually deal with this.And the banking industry and financial services industry has actually implemented confirmation of payee. So what that does is, as you key in a BSB an account number and you key in the name, the service will actually tell you whether that name matches.I think it's really important when you look at the smsf, you know, landscape making sure that that is verified and that that is confirmed, but also just even payouts, just whether that's to rollovers to SMSFs as being again critically important, but just to individuals. So am I paying it to the right person? That's just one component of it.I think from a PayID perspective you also get that option as well to be able to see the name and it actually responds back to you to say this is the name of the person that you're paying it out to based on a PayID. And that PayID may be a mobile phone number or it might be for businesses. And this is where again that layer of trust comes in.It could be an ABN and they may have registered their ABN to be able to say that that's a PAY ID that you're paying out to as well. So again they're almost like these little steps that, that exist in terms of the validation processes as you start making payments.But our messages actually have an extra bit in them as well.So and I don't want to get too technical, but the back saw that old batch files or some people ABA file or the Semtext file I think some even are calling it. Still, that's a really limited text string. It doesn't contain a lot of information in there.In an NPP message we have over 1400 fields that are available or elements within that message that can be populated. Crikey.

Neil Benson

All right, that's a bit more than a 12 character description field.

Marnie Ryan

Okay, 12 character references, no longer.But, but when you do that there's actually elements in there that allow for fraud checking and for, for security between the banks so that those elements actually provide an additional layer of security that is, you know, irrelevant to anyone who's in the end parties. But those banks are able to determine and do really comprehensive screening on those transactions that are going through.And when you do that, that actually adds in that extra layer of protection across those payments.

Neil Benson

Right. I occasionally make personal contributions to my super account through bpay.Normally the fund gives me some BPAY details and says if you want to make a personal contribution or a spouse contribution, use this one or whatever. Those, you know, BPAY is great, but it's still quite a latent product compared to mpp.Do you see funds providing some kind of, I don't know, will BPAY ever go real time? Or how will that change for members wanting to make personal contributions to their superannuation account?

Marnie Ryan

BPAY is one of our products.And so, you know, part of the reason why AP plus came together was because, you know, we're a member led or member owned organization and all of those members owned the same products, whether that was fos, BPAY or npp. So part of us coming together is about simplifying and harmonizing the systems that we have.Is that something on our roadmap that we're looking at where we're consulting and navigating that? So I think there is appetite for us to look at how things are improved with bpay.However, saying that BPAY is still, you know, an incredibly important in terms of consumer choice, people really love it. And actually that validation of their customer reference number when they put that in is really important.And I think it makes them feel like, yes, I've trusted, I've actually put the right reference number in and I know it's going to go through and there's not going to be any reconciliation issues. So we see that still as being really important what that looks like in the future.You know, there's a number of things in the back of my mind that I would love to see the innovation in that space on.

Neil Benson

Yeah, I've, I've bought airline tickets and all sorts of other things using PayID and it's, it's a completely different mechanism. It's quite novel and it feels, you know, very different to me as a consumer.And the instant responsiveness that you get from the airline's website say, yeah, we just got your money, it's landed in our account. Your tickets are confirmed, you're off to, you're off to Sydney or whatever.I'd love to get that same responsiveness from making a contribution to my superannuation account through PAYID or something similar. So that I can see, yep, the money's landed. It's split between, you know, Australian equities and international equities.You know, enjoy your retirement.

Marnie Ryan

And I think that's good for us. That's where we want to get to in the future. We want to be able to come back and provide that notification.We want you to be able to see that that has actually landed in the account now, what that looks like.And I think there's some hesitation on how that actually plays out over the industry sort of because it's gradual for them to actually start communicating with their members in that type of fashion. Like they might do it through a portal or they might you might log in and actually do that process through the portal.But the notifications and having that responsiveness, where would you like to see that? Would you like to see that in your banking channel? And how does that then into play?There's some things that I think that as an industry, and if I'm really honest when we talk about this now, you can't look at it as super industry by itself. You need to actually look at it with banks, payment providers, DSPs, employers and the super industry, because it is actually this whole value chain.And so that's why we're really happy to be included in the conversations.But we want to make it the best experience for you to know that that money's there and also to be certain that it's there, not just that you have sent it. We let you know you sent it, but we don't know whether it's land or not yet.But also I would say the other piece with that is the errors and the rejection messages.And again, that's been really critical in the conversations we've been having with the ATO and industry because of the condensed timeframe for payday. Super. Actually being on top of those errors is going to be critically important for employers especially.And if you think about, I know that there is, you know, discussions around extending it from seven days to 10 days and those types of things. If you have an error for a weekly paid employee and you don't fix it within that week, you just compound the errors.

Sarah Penn

Yeah, you're just getting more errors on. More errors on.

Marnie Ryan

Yeah, yeah.So being responsive, getting those error messages, having the funds back, because as a small business, if I've already paid my money away and I don't get it back and I have, I'm expected to return it again. Corrected. Yeah, that's not going to fly, if I'm honest.

Sarah Penn

No, no, but is it?

Neil Benson

So we're gonna have to jump in those errors really quickly to prevent all the future errors from, you know, snowballing and piling up bones.

Marnie Ryan

But once you do, and if you have early notifications to that point, you can actually deal with them.

Sarah Penn

And so then it's part of that. Where do those messages go? Do they? Because it'll be the bank, presumably, that gets the messages and then what do they do with them?To put them somewhere sensible so that they can be action straight away.

Marnie Ryan

So I think a really positive thing that's come out is, you know, even what I've heard from, from industry, a lot of the clearinghouses are already messaging that back to employers as part of their error messages.And that's really, really important to see that they've already got those notifications or there's some mechanism that will allow them to be able to identify that and then they'll see it come back into their accounts.

Neil Benson

So the $5 billion question, Marnie, is between Payday super and NPP, will the number of employers who don't make their superannuation guarantee contributions fall with these innovations or is it still going to be a battle to get some lardy, you know, lazy, good for nothing employers to make contributions for their members?

Sarah Penn

I don't know.

Marnie Ryan

I can comment on that. Whether that I'm not sure it's going to be the, it's going to solve every problem.Like I would say that it'll raise awareness though, and I think, you know, it'll make the funds more aware. It's just a level of transparency that I think has been created in this sense that you know where you're up to.I mean, you know, they keep laughing at me, as in some of the discussions, saying, well, don't people log in and see how much their super is? And everyone laughs at me saying, well, they've got to remember their password and things like that. Well, yeah, so all of those things might change.I mean, customer behavior may change, that they might go in and have a look at it more frequently. But again, it's more about awareness, if I'm honest, than anything else.

Neil Benson

I think if you polled the vast majority of superannuation members and said name the four dates that employers have to make contributions today, they wouldn't have a clue. And so if you don't know when the contribution is due, you don't know when to check. And so you don't check and you leave it.And maybe you check your annual statement, maybe you don't.But now if you know that you're getting paid fortnightly and the contributions are going to land fortnightly, you know when to check assembly of your monthly as well.So I'm hoping the member awareness that contributions should be landing as frequently as your pay lands in your bank account, then members are more incentivised to check and chase up their employer to make sure there's no issues. And hopefully that does reduce the number of people who don't receive their employer contributions on time.

Sarah Penn

And am I right in thinking that with the MPP it should be, she says, should always a dangerous word, that if you, that if I, if my salary hits my bank account on a Tuesday that I would expect to see my, hopefully my super contribution would hit my super on the Tuesday as well. That you would like. Is that the nirvana? Is that where we're trying to head to?

Marnie Ryan

So that, I mean, you would hope so. But I, I mean, you know, the.

Sarah Penn

Super simple on the super side because,.

Marnie Ryan

Because of the way in which the data and payment, you know, there's a contribution message that needs to come through SuperStream. So that means it has to come through a gateway or a clearinghouse.

Sarah Penn

Yeah, both.

Marnie Ryan

And so in that sense the data and the payment have to match.And so if you're an employer and you're sending it to your clearinghouse, that clearinghouse will actually prepare the payment and the, and the data together. Or as a gateway, it might be that they'll get the data and then they'll help to push that payment directly to the fund.Now do they land on that exact same day with npp? They can.Because you know, our expectation is that it takes three and a half seconds for something to go from, you know, one end, one point to another. But does that mean that that process with aligning it with the superannuation contributions file.

Sarah Penn

I'm so behind the eight ball on this stuff. It's really, it's. My brain is having to brain hard to think about how this is going to work.But I guess, I guess so that idea of I get if my money hits my bank account on a Tuesday when I get paid, the current setup is realistically, it's still going to take probably an extra day or two for that to get through, through the extra steps we have. But ideally we would eventually get to the point when your super also hits on the Tuesday.And I guess that's the thing is like if I know that my money's supposed to be in my bank account and my super supposed to be in my super on a Tuesday, then maybe I am more likely to check both of them and notice if it's not there.Whereas if my bank, if I know that my bank account hits on a Tuesday and my super gets there at some distant point in the future and I know not when that is, it makes it, it makes it very hard to check or not. It's not, it doesn't make it hard to check. It just makes it less likely that.

Marnie Ryan

People, people will, because you're correlating the two together.And that's the key I think in this because it's, it's, and you know, it's almost like there's, there's an event that happens and then with that event I. There's a multiple things that'll, you know, I might have money landing in different accounts. I might be paying off bills or something like that.So there's, yeah, certain things that you can align and I think it helps when you know that. Definitely.

Neil Benson

So, Marnie, what other innovations do you think AP plus is going to unleash on the superannuation sector that we should all remain vigilant for and look forward to?We've talked a couple about making personal contributions via BPAY and some others, but anything else that you'd love to see happen in the superannuation space?

Marnie Ryan

It's really funny because since we had been, you know, for many, many years, we've been talking about that problem at the end of the year around, you know, can I top up my assets, you know, when. Yeah. So many. That has always been in the back of my mind one of those things that just kills me. And, and, and if you miss it, what happens then?And you know, my cap and have I gone over and what does that look like? I think for me, that has always been one of our foundational sort of pieces with the npp. I can leave it.I can almost just determine what that looks like right up to the end. I don't have to make that payment on a Friday. I can do it on the weekend, especially because these payments will process, you know, 24 by 7.And when you think about that, the value of that, that's incredibly important, especially for small businesses and others who are, let's face it, doing their admin on weekends or out of hours. No, that's the only time they're going to be. That's really the only time they're going to be able to do it.But I think as you look sort of well and truly into the future, I would love to be able to go into, you know, a fun portal, see what my, my contributions are. Potentially just press a button and allow for funds to be drawn out of my.

Neil Benson

Yes.

Sarah Penn

The rest of it.

Marnie Ryan

That leverage the click the rest of it button key in numbers. I don't want to. Yeah. And you tell me how much you know, I might know what that's going to be.It might be that this is the value that you need and you make sure that you've got that there. But just pressing a button and I've already authorized that that money can come out. So pay to is our product that does that.Where we sort of had, you know, I'm pulling funds from your account, but you've given me permission to do that. And that one button without me having to key in a reference number or anything like that that I know I will stuff up.That's the aim for me to get to that point to be able to do that and know that it's secure. There's enough information in there that everyone in that journey is going to be okay with it. Yeah.So I think that that for me is where we want to get.

Neil Benson

That's a.

Sarah Penn

Pension payments too. It's the same thing. A lot of people don't want to take any money out of super until they absolutely have to.But you, but there are minimum drawdowns and so a lot of people leave it to the end of the year.I actually remember back in the day when I, when I used to work at Macquarie and we did an awful lot in self managed super and there was one particular firm that we, that we did a lot of work with and everyone knew you weren't allowed to ring anyone in that firm in the month of June and God help you if you did because they were looking after trying to sort out their clients pension payments. Yes. And make sure that everyone took the minimum balance out.And as a result you weren't allowed to ring them in June because they were in absolute administrative hell trying to sort everybody out. It sounds like this might actually turn that into just the last week of June or you know rather than.

Marnie Ryan

And imagine being able to choose it of madness. Yeah. And knowing as well that it's going to the right bank account.The fund's already got that information that they know if it's automatically sort of set up with a pay to agreement. They actually don't even have to store the bank account that's, that's there.It would just be a press of a button and because of that it will go straight to the. Basically the member.

Neil Benson

Well we've got that to look forward to in 2020. When you said that was going to.

Marnie Ryan

Roll out 2027 that's onto the funds. You know and, but, but when I think about it, you know they're the types of things that they need to be thinking about.It's not necessarily what's now and, and these things take time. You know I said seven years for us to even get to this point. It's not, it's not simple.They're complex business processes because these things need to be approved and you know even just you know distributing funds needs to go through multiple pull approval levels. That type of business process. If you're changing it you need to think about it.But it doesn't mean you can't take small steps now, learn from little pieces that you can implement. Yeah.

Sarah Penn

And so the big dates are 1 July 2026. They've got to be. Funds have to be able to accept NPP payments. So in order to make sure what they.Does that mean they need to talk to all the clearinghouses to get that?

Marnie Ryan

They do, and we're seeing that already.

Sarah Penn

That's kind of how they go about doing that.

Marnie Ryan

Not necessarily for the payment. So for the new contributions message, yes, they will work with the clearinghouses and gateways.But for payments, we're encouraging funds to talk to their banks and we're also encouraging the banks to reach out to them to say, you know, is your account enabled? Have you got any problems that you're reconciling with reconciling it.And if you do, please put your hand up now, you know, let us know that that's a problem. And then in that, make sure that you actually have a really clear understanding of what payments are coming into your accounts.Because even as we've had these discussions, we've seen that some of them don't know which method they're coming in through. It could be, you know, on DE or becs or it could be on NPP and they're not really sure. So it is really important to understand.

Sarah Penn

And it's the bank that will help. If you're a super fund, it's your bank that will help you figure out what's coming through on what, what platform. Right?

Marnie Ryan

Yep, definitely.

Sarah Penn

And then the longer term one is being ready that Becs and Oz payments is going to be turned off in 2030, hopefully probably that's the targeted date.

Marnie Ryan

At this point in time, you know, things are challenging, but that's sort of where we're going towards definitely.

Neil Benson

So, Mari, just to confirm that that NPP acceptance date of 1 July 2026, that's already in action. That's separate from the pending legislation for Payday super, which is due on the same date.So the NPP move been approved by ATO doesn't require any legislation. The date's locked in, we're all good to go. The Payday super legislation is still hopefully going to come in October in the next city. Good.

Sarah Penn

Yeah.

Marnie Ryan

And maybe if I just talk to some of the things and give you a sense of what we're seeing as well in market, that might give you a sense that funds are already moving. So, you know, we've got a couple of leading either banks or early adopters which is with Quick super, which is the Westpac Super Clearinghouse.They have actually had early adopters and you might have seen they've had Mercer host, plus CBUs, Hester and a couple of others that are already started piloting Real time payment.And then we've had SuperChoice work really closely with Anz to start their pilot and they've started leveraging it so employers are actually making payments into SuperChoice.And then we've had a gateway which has been in a unique situation, which is aus, and they've actually been doing superannuation on the NPP where they bilaterally agreed with those funds that they'll make those payments into the account for about 18 months now. So there are.Yeah, so there are a couple of them that have actually been proactively managing this and really moving towards this day without it even being enforced, if I'm really honest.

Neil Benson

Very good. Well, Marnie, thank you so much for joining us.We really appreciate your expertise and I thought it was super interesting to find out a lot more about NPP and what that means for the superannuation sector. So really appreciate your time. Thanks for coming on.

Marnie Ryan

Thank you. It was really nice to talk to you.

Neil Benson

Thanks for listening to that super show. We hope today's episode gave you something useful to take back to your team.

Sarah Penn

If you're thinking we should talk, we'd love to chat. You can book a meeting with either of us via the link in the show notes.

Neil Benson

And don't forget to follow the show, share it with a colleague and drop us a line if there's a topic.

Neil Benson

You want us to tackle.

Sarah Penn

Catch you next time on that super show.

Marnie Ryan Profile Photo

Head of Product Innovation & Enablement, Business Payments at AusPay Plus

Marnie Ryan is an experienced product management professional in Australia’s payments industry, currently serving as a Product Manager at AusPayPlus. She plays a central role in developing and enhancing national payment services, working closely with industry stakeholders to ensure products are reliable, secure and aligned with the needs of financial institutions and consumers. With a background spanning payments operations, banking and large‑scale product delivery, she brings a strong blend of analytical capability, operational insight and strategic thinking to her work. Marnie is passionate about strengthening Australia’s payments ecosystem and contributing to solutions that support innovation, efficiency and trust across the sector.