Participation in the PayTo payments service is picking up, with a dozen authorised deposit-taking institutions and payments service providers authorised to offer PayTo services this week.

All of them are sponsored by Cuscal, which is a new payments platform participant and a certified PayTo participant. Cuscal provides a PayTo gateway.

The new payer participants are Bank Australia, BankWAW, Broken Hill Community Credit Union, Credit Union SA, First Option Bank, Horizon Bank, Laboratories Credit Union, Police & Nurses Credit Ltd (P&N Bank, bcu) and RACQ Bank.

They join Commonwealth Bank and its subsidiary Bankwest, Bendigo Bank, Great Southern Bank and People’s Choice Credit Union.

The new initiating participants are Global Payments and Merchant Warrior.

They join payments service providers Azupay, Ezypay, Monoova, Paypa Plane and Zai (all sponsored by Cuscal) and Zepto.

Initiating participants work with businesses to set up payment agreements with their customers.

It is not clear how many of these participants are active. Great Southern Bank said it has enabled the service for its customers’ personal transaction and savings accounts.

CBA said it had completed the first phase of a trial and would expand the trial over the next few months. 

Developed by NPP Australia (now part of Australian Payments Plus) as a mandate payment arrangement for consumers and businesses, PayTo was launched at the end of June. 

Consumers have been promised a high level of visibility and control over their payment arrangements, with the ability to view, authorise, pause or cancel payment agreements.

Merchants are also being promised benefits, such as being able to get upfront validation that the customer’s account details are correct. And when a payment is initiated PayTo will check that adequate funds are available.

ANZ, NAB and Westpac missed the PayTo launch and have been put on notice by the Reserve Bank that they must deliver PayTo services by April next year.