The Reserve Bank plans to take a bigger role in directing co-operative infrastructure developments in the payments system and the first item on its agenda is real-time payments' processing.Reserve Bank governor Glenn Stevens said innovation in customer-facing technology was moving at a much faster pace than the underlying infrastructure. Speaking at the Australian Payments Clearing Association's payments symposium in Sydney yesterday, Stevens said: "This is a problem because innovation in a network industry is not like innovation in other industries. "No matter how much time, effort and money a financial institution puts into its own systems, and the ways in which customers interface with those systems, the payments service it can provide is only as good as the arrangements that allow payments to pass between institutions."These arrangements are in the co-operative space. Co-operative decision-making between competitors is notoriously difficult."Stevens said the Reserve Bank's strategic review of innovation was due out in the next couple of weeks. It would make a case for some kind of mechanism to overcome co-ordination problems in payments' system infrastructure development and ensure that any disconnect between the public interest and the business case is properly managed.Stevens said: "Some external impetus may be required to initiate change. The Payments System Board will need to take a stronger role in setting some general goals for the payments' system. There will need to be greater interaction between the board and the industry to establish and work towards shared goals."He said one area on which the PSB had focused was the timing of payments. "It is very clear that both individuals and businesses are demanding greater immediacy and greater accessibility in all facets of their day-to-day activities. This includes payments."The infrastructure that underpins retail payments assumes that making funds available the next business day is sufficient. Australia's approach is starting to look a bit dated. "It is our view that availability of real-time transfers would fill some important existing gaps and would also open up enormous potential for innovation on top of that system."Under present plans routine payments will be made more frequently than overnight with batches processed several time a day.