Aussies’ money is on the move again as private-sector credit grew 0.6% in September, pushing total credit expansion past 7% while banks crank up their lending appetite. Leading firms locked in cover early as administration costs rose this quarter, especially with power bills going up and online systems slowing during busy periods.
Australian banks have already hired more people – now there over 171,000 employees, including positions in risk and compliance, according to data from PwC Australia, and ASIC’s commissioner recently said he is “really worried” about the growth of private credit outside of the usual channels, he also pointed out that new lending models and payment rails end up running ahead of their systems to oversee it.
Gaming Cash Machine – The Lab Where Banks Test New Payment Options
Online gaming has evolved into one of the busiest testing grounds for new financial technology — the Web3 gaming market is forecasted to grow from $37.55 billion this year to $182.98 billion by 2034, attracting significant institutional investment and payment firms developing software to handle that type of traffic.
Players exchange billions of dollars’ worth of assets every single year, and the in-game economies turnover the size of small countries.
Gaming platforms register more than 5 million transactions an hour, during peak times, according to Dapp Radar, while a typical regional bank clears about 100,000 transactions at its peak.
Visa and Mastercard charge 2.9% plus fees for international gaming transactions, wire transfers between countries often take 3-5 business days, and currency conversion/additional physical needs to facilitate payment incur another 3-4%.
Crypto brings costs near zero and time from days to minutes – Bitcoin settles in about 8 minutes for $2-3, Ethereum in 2 minutes, and Solana does it in seconds for pennies. Approximately 30% of all online wagers are made through cryptocurrency, with Bitcoin accounting for over 60% and Ethereum for 27%.
However, USDT is still growing faster than CRYPT because it grants those same benefits of crypto speed without having to hold some of your winnings and transition them back into USD.
Live formats that feature substantial cash pools required a rail that matched, particularly online poker, which sees over $2 billion in tournament entries every year, with prize pools regularly reaching seven figures. AU players who previously lost 4-6% in conversion and waited a week for their winnings to cash out now have their money available in seconds with transparent RTPs on every game.
Malta has drafted the playbook for the sector with its Virtual Financial Assets Act, which represents almost 67% of FCA-licensed crypto gaming operators, while smart contracts automatically dispense tournament prizes – for example, when a pot is worth $100,000, the winners are determined in seconds after the river card. Meanwhile, AU banks, having watched $3.4 billion in gaming transaction fees evaporate last year, are launching ‘instant’ payment products, which still take hours to clear.
Lagged Settlements Cost Australian Businesses
Peak periods expose the limits instantly:
Most “instant” transfers still take one to three hours during busy times due to liquidity checks and anti-fraud filters that banks run. Transfers between banks slow even more as each bank has its own model of risk.
The Reserve Bank’s most recent dataset indicates NPP load jumps more than 50% during peaks in the afternoon, and throughput slows as the system approaches capacity.
Business payments now account for 35% of all online transactions in Australia, and subscription platforms, payroll systems, logistics software, and other cloud billing tools are now clearing thousands of micro-payments per minute at peak times.
Data from the Treasury and RBA indicate local online payments are increasing 13% year-on-year, placing extra load on the operating infrastructure that has scarcely changed in a decade.
Those delays can ruin everyday work in companies that need a steady cash flow:
Retail teams delay new orders for stock when payments arrive late, because suppliers will not ship anything until the money is actually in their account.
Transport operators hold departures when the fees for fuel or route charges have not been through, since the trucks will not leave the depot until those charges are approved.
Payroll systems hold cash back during the Friday rush, as the bank delays cause the hold-up, increasing support calls, fines, and unreceptive staff.
Even larger service providers slow their internal approval cycles for work when service queues cause volatility with cash into their institutions in the afternoon. Do we notice a pattern? All the inevitable delays resurfacing expose the same gaps in the rails they should scale, thinking of this magnitude by now.
Healthcare Real Estate as $2.1 Trillion Market Outperforming Offices
Retail teams delay new orders for stock when payments arrive late, because suppliers will not ship anything until the money is actually in their account.
Transport operators hold departures when the fees for fuel or route charges have not been through, since the trucks will not leave the depot until those charges are approved.
Payroll systems hold cash back during the Friday rush, as the bank delays cause the hold-up, increasing support calls, fines, and unreceptive staff.
Even larger service providers slow their internal approval cycles for work when service queues cause volatility with cash into their institutions in the afternoon. Do we notice a pattern? All the inevitable delays resurfacing expose the same gaps in the rails they should scale, thinking of this magnitude by now.
The transactions involved relied on long leases, speciality tenants, and service contracts that ensured cash flow for many years, satisfying every involved risk committee. Super funds increased exposure, while private credit supplemented loans from traditional banks. In addition, healthcare REITs raised money for new developments that did not even exist ten years ago.
States added their own financing layer, with regional health programs helping to fund new clinics. Long leases on imaging centres and day procedures equated to guaranteed income for investors.
Operators sold non-medical real estate, such as car parks and retail strips, to upgrade equipment or expand clinics with no debt. Sale-and-leaseback financed cash and maintained control of day-to-day operations.
Deeds affect patients, regardless of whether they see the financing connected to it. New diagnostic centres, surgical wings, and specialist hubs exist because investors signed multi-year contracts behind the scenes.
Large hospital groups employ the same tools that corporate property portfolios implement: cash-flow modelling, real estate optimisation, and continuous forecasting to prepare for increasing demand. The build-out across Australia is already beginning to change access to care.
Manufacturers Gain Powers They Didn’t Have Five Years Ago
Traditionally, manufacturing has been slow-moving, but now it is operating as a live market complete with its own financial instruments. More than three-quarters of manufacturers cite trade volatility as their top external risk factor, but it is also the very volatility of trade that creates a competitive gap for companies that adopt next-gen financing technologies.
Supply-chain finance is forecasted to reach $18 billion by 2029, but the real shift lies in how every transaction can self-trigger in its own ecosystem. A plant assembling electronics in Brisbane and pulling components from Taiwan used to deal with letters of credit, currency swings, and multi-week settlement times – and now:
IoT sensors confirm delivery, smart contracts instantaneously trigger payment, while blockchain rails evidence every step, and AI adjusts the pricing as conditions change.
Small manufacturers – the ones usually squeezed out – benefit the most. Banks are underwriting loans using:
- Satellite imagery
- Hourly electricity loads
- Shipment frequency
- Machine utilisation patterns
If the systems see movement, credit opens IP automatically. Machine shops that lost access to $50k ten years ago can now leave with a $1m+ working capital line of credit because we have machine algorithms that understand their throughput better than a human loan officer.
Programmatic financing is already operating, in some capacity, across all important industrial sectors:
- Automotive fights electrification timelines
- Pharma tracks temperature, custody, and compliance stamps to avoid rejected batches
- Green energy tracks emissions in real time
Even risk can be lowered, with liquidity that has been stuck behind paperwork now entering the digital era, with software tracking the world faster than the global capital markets could.
Retail Turns into a Financial Network Wearing a Storefront
Retail is so much more than a margin business; it is a financial ecosystem hiding behind shelves and shopping carts. A whopping 59% of larger retailers have expanded private-label products. But the real change is happening behind the counter. The buy-now-pay-later volume has surpassed $500 billion, which has increased conversion rates by more than 30% for retailers that offer the service.
The supply-chain leaders were anticipating record technology spending in 2025, and 93% of respondents say the systems they are putting in place will come from financial services. Their inventory systems are becoming full operating systems:
- Built-in underwriting
- Dynamic pricing engines
- Automated risk scoring
- Embedded payment processing
Most large retail chains now earn more from their branded credit products than from selling goods. Coffee chains offer crypto rewards. Grocery stores participate in clearing networks. So, the line between “small business” and “bank” is officially gone:
- A boutique in Brooklyn runs payments through the same infrastructure as global banks
- Food trucks run embedded financing programs
- Freelancers act as their own payment processors
Commerce and finance merged quietly, confirmed by the surge in retailers making more money from financial products than from core merchandise.
When AI Leaves the Banks, Everything Starts Behaving Like Finance
The financial sector was the first to industrialise AI at scale, and the tools that emerged did not remain in the vault. By 2030, each major bank will have a generative AI for code, risk modelling, and customer operations. But the spillover is ultimately what’s important. 65% of CFOs have already deployed AI systems that were developed for internal use inside banks. These tools now run:
- Restaurant staffing forecasts
- Hospital surgery scheduling
- Farm planting cycles
- Logistics routing
- Insurance risk analysis
- Education personalisation systems
Banks have hundreds of AI projects running simultaneously – fraud detection models, credit scoring engines, forecasting tools – all of which will simply become plug-and-play modules for any industry willing to pay for them.
Investment is rapidly accelerating: the financial services industry is on track to spend $126.4 billion on artificial intelligence by 2028, growing at an astonishing 29% per year. That investment leaks into every other industry through the API, from consulting firms, employees jumping industries, etc.
At that point, everyone has the same toolkit.
All Data Inside One Network
By the year 2030, the largest financial institutions may not be traditional banks. It could be retailers, gaming publishers, logistics companies, or social apps. Whoever is processing enough transactions can manufacture their own rails–APIs and cloud infrastructures are yielding a single connected network where:
- A taco truck processes payments like JPMorgan
- A freelancer in Manila accesses the same planning engines that were only available to the top banks
- A gaming platform effectively serves as an international clearing house
- Programmable money is right on their coattails:
- Salaries programmatically auto-investing in down markets
- Insurance triggered by smart watch data automating payout decisions
Supply chains are self-financing based on predictive, state-of-the-art cash forecasting models that pull liquidity at the moment a demand signal occurs in the replenishment system
Factory equipment is negotiating its own replacement schedule
Recently, the BIS reported a 32% increase in API based settlement pathways in the Asia-Pacific market alone last year. The rails are consolidating. And in this new structure, competitors are posting settlement speeds that legacy players may no longer be able to model.
Regulators Struggle as Payments Outpace the Rulebook
Australia’s main financial regulator, the Australian Securities & Investments Commission (ASIC), has reported a remarkable 500 % growth in private-credit lending over the past decade, while expressing concern that supervision has not kept pace. ASIC examined 28 private-credit funds in their latest review (October 2024 to August 2025), focusing on governance conflicts, application of valuation standards, and transparency of fees.
In parallel, the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (AUSTRAC) confirmed receipt of greater than 230 million international-funds-transfer reports for 2024-25, or nearly 640,000 in AUSTRAC’s system daily, more than double the number of domestic transfers. And with some payouts settling within minutes between wallets and cloud financial products, compliance procedures that rely on manual reviews and snapshots from one day to the next no longer fit the pace of contemporary finance.
The outcome: explains a confused patchwork of workflows, leaving firms vulnerable to fraud, liquidity silos, and operational strain. Regulators are promoting reporting based on real-time data, stricter requirements for fintechs, and closer scrutiny of movements of shadow credit. Firms that fail to accommodate the new regulations risk becoming increasingly out of step with oversight and regulatory scrutiny while competitors build the scaled, monitored infrastructure emerging to define the next generation of enterprise finance.
An Economy Too Big for Its Shell
Many industries are in a moment where activity is increasing inside interconnected channels that connect retail, production, energy, transportation, and online markets. In this context, new data flows are occurring between firms that never interacted before, with pricing, supply timing, or demand signals now able to flow with far greater precision. International counterparties leverage this ability to adjust production schedules, plan shipping volumes/freight movements, and make plans around energy usage with much tighter tolerances.
These connections form quietly, and their impact expands as interconnected systems share data more consistently. Ultimately, it is building towards a situation able to handle workloads that previously existed outside its boundaries.
