About Us
Payment Decisions was formed by Matt and Ara in late 2023 with the goal of helping Australian businesses make better decisions and reduce the cost of payments processing.
With a combined 25+ years of experience in both global and domestic payments complemented with deep consulting, engineering and data analytics backgrounds we knew we could add value to Australian businesses. Over many discussions we discovered that our collective skills and experiences could solve a challenging domestic payments problem – how to dynamically route debit transactions between different networks in real-time.
For many years Australian businesses have had the right to decide which network on a Dual Network Debit Card (DNDC) gets to process a transaction in a practice called Least Cost Routing (LCR). LCR has reduced the cost of payments for Australian businesses with a recent RBA publication stating that “the cost of accepting debit card transactions is nearly 20 per cent lower for merchants that have LCR turned on compared with those with LCR turned off” [1].
But current LCR solutions cannot optimally route individual transactions to the most cost-effective network – which the industry refers to as dynamic LCR. Instead, current LCR solutions typically send all eligible DNDC transactions to the eftpos network, which tends to be the lowest cost network overall. Whilst this approach made sense during the early years of LCR the increasing complexity of the debit routing market (e.g. mobile routing, small business programmes, debit premiumisation etc) means current LCR solutions are no longer "good enough". A more sophisticated routing approach is required.
Payment Decisions’ analysis indicates that, once mobile transactions become routable, if the market adopted dynamic LCR to the level of expectation set by the RBA then an estimated $50-100m pa of wholesale network costs could be saved. That is a significant opportunity!
Using a globally novel approach (which is in the process of being patented) Payment Decisions is excited to unveil their Dynamic LCR solution for the Australian market. Our solution is designed to augment and turbo-charge existing LCR solutions - it does not replace them. If you are a major merchant, Acquirer, or Payment Service Provider, we invite you to engage with us. Let us explore how our innovative solution can effectively slash your wholesale network costs while simultaneously enhancing value for your customers.
[1] “The Effect of Least-cost Routing on Merchant Payments Costs” published in RBA Bulletin April 2024
The Founders
Matt Barr
Matt brings a wealth of international and domestic payment and leadership experience to the team having spent over 8 years with Mastercard in senior executive business development, product and innovation roles based both in Australia and North America. Subsequently Matt had 4 years locally with eftpos/AP+ initially leading the eftpos product team and then as the eftpos Managing Director. He was a key leader in the successful transformation of eftpos’ fortunes.
Prior to entering the payments industry Matt worked in management consulting, retail banking and telecommunications with some of Australasia’s leading companies in those sectors and gaining essential knowledge and skills to help navigate the collision between the payment, banking and telco industries that digital innovation has fueled.
Matt spent too many years in higher education, gaining degrees in Electrical & Electronic Engineering from Canterbury University (NZ) plus politics, economics and philosophy degrees from Oxford University (UK) as a Rhodes Scholar. He is arguably both well qualified and well educated!
Ara Aravinthan
Ara is an accomplished payments and data analytics leader with over 15 years of experience in consumer banking, payment schemes, acquiring and merchant management. He has a proven track record of driving revenue growth, developing successful payment products, and injecting data-based decisions across organisations he has worked at.
Ara played an integral leadership role at eftpos/AP+. By championing data-driven decision-making, Ara catalysed significant shifts in eftpos' pricing of products and commercial deals. This strategic vision extended across issuing, acquiring, merchant, and government partnerships, positioning eftpos for sustainable growth and market leadership.
Prior to joining eftpos, Ara held account management, product management and pricing leadership roles at Mastercard in Sydney and Singapore. He also has significant experience in data science developed over 20 years across multiple countries in the Asia Pacific region while working at Citibank, Telstra and IBM.
Ara holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from the Boston University and further executive education at Stanford and Singapore Management University.