Citi has launched PayTo initiator services for its institutional clients in Australia, providing a real-time account-to-account payment alternative to credit cards, debit cards, and direct debits. The move positions Citi as an active participant in Australia's New Payments Platform (NPP) ecosystem, through which PayTo is delivered.
Through PayTo, Citi's institutional clients can initiate pull payments directly from their customers' bank accounts in real time. The arrangement gives merchants and corporates greater visibility over payment flows and removes several friction points associated with traditional card-based collection methods.
Operational benefits and use cases
The PayTo capability addresses two recurring pain points for institutional clients: card processing fees and chargebacks. By shifting transactions to direct account debits, clients can reduce their reliance on card network fees and lower exposure to disputed transactions, which carry both financial and operational costs.
The service is applicable across a broad range of transaction types, including in-app and ecommerce payments, outsourced payroll processing, utility bill collection, flight bookings, subscription billing, and digital wallet top-ups. This scope reflects the versatility of the NPP infrastructure, which underpins PayTo and enables real-time settlement across participating Australian financial institutions.
Reconciliation is also simplified under the PayTo model, as the account-to-account structure provides cleaner data linkage between payment initiation and settlement, reducing manual matching requirements for finance teams.
Context within Citi's services portfolio
The PayTo launch forms part of a broader set of capabilities within Citi's Services business. The division already offers Spring by Citi, an end-to-end digital payments service supporting ecommerce and business-to-business funds flows globally, as well as Real-Time Funding for cross-border transactions aimed at corporate clients. The addition of PayTo extends the real-time payments offering to the domestic Australian market.
PayTo was developed as part of Australia's broader push to modernise its payments infrastructure. The NPP, launched in 2018, was designed to support faster, data-rich payments between Australian bank accounts, and PayTo builds on this foundation by enabling third parties to initiate authorised payment agreements on behalf of their clients.
A company official cited the shift towards a continuous, digitally-driven economy as a driver for deploying the capability, and indicated that strong client uptake is anticipated as awareness of the cost and operational advantages grows among institutional users.
