After six years of planning and development Australia's New Payments Platform has just reached 2 million PayID registrations, and climbing. Although close to 70 institutions have signed up, the major banks are only just getting started, leaving room for plenty of further growth, according to Tony Richards, head of the payments policy department at the Reserve Bank of Australia.He was giving an update on the NPP to this year's Payments Symposium at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, outlining the phases from concept design to launch.Richards explained that the process took five years from the time industry consultation finished in 2012 to the testing phase in 2017, ahead of its launch for public use on 13 February this year. There were initially around 50 institutions involved, with the number now up to at least 65 institutions - and the major banks yet to fully commit. "Five or six years ago, some banks may have questioned the case for moving to real-time payments, however no one is questioning that case now," he said. "Real-time settlement is going well."  "Less than eight months since its launch and the number of PayID registrations has just reached 2 million with monthly volumes and values of NPP transactions also growing strongly."At this point, there are more than 50 million Australian bank accounts accessible via the NPP, with that number growing steadily. With the first part of the build mostly complete, the industry has ambitious plans for additional NPP functionality. Indeed, the early signs are that banks are looking to move their Direct Entry payments over to the fast rails sooner than expected, according to Richards.Other untapped potential is in the "overlay services", and the first of these is Osko by BPAY, a basic fast payment system with enhanced data. However, BPAY has plans for additional overlays including request-to-pay and payment-with-document services, Richards said.NPP Australia is also working actively with other potential overlay providers. Possible use-cases for additional overlay services include e-invoicing, superannuation payments, and payment services supporting the capital markets (which have long used ISO 20022 data in their operations).On Friday it announced an API framework with three samples."While some of this could potentially be delivered via overlay services, it is likely that there will be additional central functionality provided or arranged by NPPA - for example, possibly a central consent and mandate service that could be used to enable direct debits through the NPP," Richards said.