Australia’s future account-to-account (A2A) payment systems may need to adapt if tokenized forms of money gain broader use, including stablecoins and tokenized liabilities, according to a draft vision for the country’s domestic payment rails.
The draft, co-developed by the Account-to-Account Payments Roundtable, which includes AusPayNet, Australian Payments Plus, the Reserve Bank of Australia and the Commonwealth Treasury, identifies digital assets as one of several external forces that could affect future A2A payments.
“Tokenised forms of money, such as stablecoins and tokenised liabilities, are moving from experimentation to adoption,” the draft said, adding that the shift reflects a move toward programmable, ledger-based value that could enable new settlement models, continuous availability and more automated execution.
The consultation suggests Australia’s payments planners are beginning to treat tokenized money as a design consideration for mainstream payment infrastructure.
The document said A2A systems “may need to support secure interoperability between account-based money and tokenised representations of fiat currency,” allowing reliable movement of funds between those environments while maintaining trust.
Common types of A2A payments. Source: RBA
The draft also treats digital assets as a potential parallel value layer alongside other emerging forces shaping payments.
It said these technologies could reshape how payments are initiated, authorized and managed, while introducing new risks around accountability, liability, data use and resilience.
Australia advances tokenization work
The A2A consultation comes as Australia continues broader work on tokenized money, stablecoins and digital asset regulation.
In July 2025, the RBA and the Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre announced the selected use cases for Project Acacia, a wholesale digital money project exploring settlement in tokenized asset markets.
The RBA said proposed settlement assets for the use cases included stablecoins, bank deposit tokens, a pilot wholesale central bank digital currency and new ways of using banks’ existing exchange settlement accounts at the RBA.
On March 25, RBA Assistant Governor Brad Jones said the next phase of financial system innovation would require moving beyond short-term pilots toward longer-term, staged environments where industry and regulators can test new technologies and adjust policy settings.
He said the interaction of wholesale CBDC with bank deposit tokens and stablecoins, as well as the synchronization of tokenized asset ledgers with Australia’s settlement infrastructure, would be areas of interest.
Australia has also moved to bring parts of the digital asset sector into its financial services framework. In November, the Treasury said proposed digital asset laws would introduce two new financial products, digital asset platforms and tokenized custody platforms, requiring them to hold an Australian Financial Services Licence.