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The world will have a not-so-distant early warning systems for bank compliance: Australia.
Australian banks say they will begin testing this October. If they fail the tests -- or if they refuse to report the reslts -- we'll know that the banks won't make it in 2000. But they probably will not report the results until July, 1999.
Not much warning.
This is from the AUSTRALIAN FINANCIAL REVIEW (May 12).
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The Australian Payments Clearing Association is to begin testing in October on six payment streams. The testing regime, announced yesterday, is to oversee systems such as Austraclear, SWIFT, the new B-Pay bill payments scheme, Eftpos, and the electronic cheque clearing system being implemented by the banks.
Consumer transactions at ATMs and Eftpos are likely to involve the most complex testing, which is scheduled to begin in October and proceed through to June 1999, taking systems far closer to the December 1999 deadline than many others. . . .
But the payment organisation's twin priorities this year -- the introduction of real-time gross settlement and speedier electronic cheque clearances -- are not expected to be affected by 2000.
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