Australian Bond Exchange Holdings Limited announced it has recently signed a set of agreements with Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Limited (ANZ) to be part of its pilot programs to trial ABE's transaction and settlement process utilising the New Payments Platform (NPP). The pilot programs will enable Australian Bond Exchange to test its newly built trading system that automates multiple parts of the OTC transaction process, facilitating fast and cost-effective transactions and settlement. The objective is to link the transaction system with the NPP which will reduce settlement of trades from the current T + 2 days down to near real-time.

The NPP is an open access infrastructure for fast payments and was launched in Australia in February 2018. The NPP was developed via industry collaboration to allow for near real-time funds availability to the recipient on a 24/7 basis. The NPP infrastructure supports the independent development of `overlay' services to offer innovative payment services to end users.

The team at Australian Bond Exchange has been working towards incorporating its technology and transaction process with NPP since the company launched in 2016. ABE has utilised in-house capability and technical expertise and does not anticipate needing costly external IT support to make this feature available once proven through the pilot testing phase and they are able to be supported by the Australian banks.