Real-Time Gross Settlement (RTGS)

What is real-time gross settlement?

Real-time gross settlement is how Australia’s high-value payments are cleared: each transaction settles on its own, immediately and in full, rather than being netted off against others in a batch. It runs through the Reserve Bank of Australia’s RITS system and is the mechanism behind large, time-critical transfers between banks. A business would encounter RTGS behind the scenes on something like a large property settlement or a major inter-company transfer, where the sum is too significant to sit in a batched run.

Why it matters for Australian finance teams

The defining features of RTGS, immediacy and finality, mean a high-value payment sent to the wrong account is settled at once and is extremely difficult to recover. Because the amounts are large, RTGS and other high-value transfers are a favourite target for business email compromise, where a fraudster times a spoofed request to coincide with a genuine large payment. The bigger the transfer, the more a single unverified account detail can cost.

How ezyshield helps

ezyshield does not process or settle RTGS payments; settlement is a function of the banking system and the Reserve Bank’s RITS. What ezyshield does is verify the parties before such a payment is authorised: confirming the person, validating the business through ABN and ASIC records, and checking bank account ownership, so a high-value transfer is not released against details no one confirmed. If the account changes, ezyshield triggers re-verification, and every check is written to an append-only audit trail that is logged and never edited or deleted. See how it works and payment fraud prevention in Australia.