Payments made between and 7.21pm and 11.47pm AEDT on Wednesday night were either delayed or not sent.

These services are now restored and are processing at full capacity, while the RBA is working with the banks to clear the backlog of payments.

The RBA has since issued an apology to Australians, claiming the error occurred during a planned change to the software that manages the Reserve Bank’s virtual servers, which disrupted a number of production servers.

"We sincerely apologise to industry participants and customers for the inconvenience and disruption caused," said Michele Bullock, RBA Deputy Governor.

"It was disappointing that this occurred and we recognise the impact this would have on people relying on the payments system.

"I want to assure people that the Bank takes the stability of the payments infrastructure very seriously and will double its effort to ensure this does not happen again."

The New Payments Platform - of which Osko is a part - was developed in 2018 by the RBA in conjunction with BPAY and several retail banks, and allows near real-time payments between parties.

Most banks participate in the NPP, with notable exceptions including Adelaide Bank, AMP, Heritage Bank, HSBC, ME Bank, RACQ Bank, and RaboBank.

First published on October 2022

Image by Alex Green via Pexels.