Australia’s $288 billion-a-day financial plumbing

Most Australians see the payments system through the lens of daily life: tapping a debit card, receiving a salary, or sending money through a banking app. But underneath those visible transactions sits a much larger and less understood system: the Reserve Bank’s real-time gross settlement system, known as RITS.

This is not a measure of household spending. It is a measure of high-value settlement. In plain English, it is the infrastructure that allows banks and other financial institutions to settle large payment obligations safely and finally across accounts held at the Reserve Bank.

That is why the numbers are so striking. In 2024/25, RITS settled an average of 69,000 transactions worth $288 billion per business day. That figure dwarfs the payment flows most people encounter directly. By comparison, total card purchases on Australian-issued cards were $100.0 billion in June 2026, or about $3.3 billion per day. New Payments Platform transactions were $265.8 billion for the month, or about $8.9 billion per day. ABS data show employers paid $109.2 billion in wages and salaries in June 2026, about $3.6 billion per day.

The comparison is useful because it shows what RTGS is — and what it is not. It is not a proxy for shopping, retail activity or consumer confidence. Much of the value moving through RITS reflects interbank activity, foreign exchange settlements and debt securities transactions. These are large-value institutional flows, so RTGS values can look enormous next to everyday payments.

That makes the public-interest value of the series fairly clear. The main story is resilience. A great deal of the Australian financial system depends on this plumbing operating smoothly. If it goes down, the consequences travel far beyond banks and markets. The average person may never see RITS directly, but they rely on it every day.