HP will tackle Australia's increasingly crowded market for the supply of switching services to banks, with plans to introduce the service next year.Dee McGrath, director, secured and unsecured lending, for HP Enterprise Services mentioned this plan at a FST Media conference in Melbourne yesterday on the future of payments. McGrath later confirmed the plan to Banking Day.  She said HP "have slated on our roadmap software for switching in 2011 … we'll be deploying in 2011".McGrath would not identify the switching solution selected by HP.HP, then trading as EDS, helped establish a cards and payments utility in 2007 targeting bank clients in Australia, New Zealand and Asia. McGrath likened the introduction of a switching service for the utility as a "bookend for our foundation capability".She said the switch will give HP "the POS end of it, point of sale switching [and] device driving capability".Woolworths, Strategic Payments Services (now owned by MasterCard) and MoneySwitch (trading as Tyro Payments) have all invested in new switching capability over the last five years.Others, including Coles and most of the big banks, are also looking at upgrading platforms that are at their end of life.