Reserve Bank payments system reformers are moving at a glacial pace towards what must be their ultimate goal of zero interchange in the Australian card payments market.The internal work at what became the Payments System Board to foster a pro-contestability ethic in Australia's industry structure dates from the late 1990s.This work culminated in joint action (in the form of a definitive document melding research and policy analysis dating from late 2000) with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.The ACCC, across the same period, ventilated its willingness to sue dominant banks and payment cards brands, with activist assistant commissioner Alan Asher encouraged by US contacts to take the nuclear option.Conversely, a risk shy Australian banking sector led, it is only fair to say, by the Reserve Bank of Australia, curated an evasive response.Taking an interest in powers shared by parliament following the 1997 Wallis Report, the RBA and PSB set the Australian payment sector into a future of measured meddling.Access barriers and costs took inevitable prominence, with an intervention that led to the licensing of Tyro Payments. Tellingly, dinkum ADI licences for newbies in Australian payments remain a rare thing, analytical crusaders deterred by the pre-eminence of incumbents.The dubious rationale for interchange fees, and the associated level of merchant fees, was a second central angst in the RBA/ACCC joint study on payments.The study ranged widely, with a zero interchange fee implied in that document as a credible policy option. This course had (and has) academic champions and even then there were promising international precedents to rely on.The industry responded with a spirited call on academic consultants for a blizzard of theoretical work on the economics of two-sided markets.Inventing new approaches along the way, Australia's banking cartel (in league with its core adviser, the RBA) protected but policed interchange fees.The regulatory architecture of designation and standards followed, a set up Australian payments providers live with to this day.The initial 2003 cap on interchange fees affected banking expense and profit structures in Australia from the beginning, inspiring a more focused costing by banks of their reward schemes.Clearer and ideally higher up-front fees began to take shape, but credible annual fees never really caught on.In its "Review of Card Payments Regulation: Conclusions" released last week, the RBA flagged only a modest interest in leaning harder against interchange fees.From mid-2017, the weighted?average interchange fee benchmark on debit and prepaid cards will be cut to eight cents, from 12 cents.The weighted?average benchmark of 50 basis points for credit card interchange will be maintained but supplemented by ceilings on individual interchange - rates of 80 basis points for credit; and 15 cents, or 20 basis points for debit and prepaid.The conclusions paper vented a degree of unease, rationalising the new policies as needed "to prevent interchange fees drifting upwards in the manner that they have previously" and presenting a new enthusiasm to patrol these fees, with "compliance with the benchmark [to be] be observed quarterly rather than every three years."The Financial System Inquiry in 2014 recommended that