The new grid: Why payment resilience is the new energy security
Steve Wiggins is chief executive of Payments NZ.
OPINION: For decades, energy security has been treated as a strategic priority – invisible when it works, destabilising when it’s put under stress. In today’s geopolitically uncertain environment, it is time to apply the same thinking to payments.
Payments modernisation is moving fast in Aotearoa New Zealand. New capabilities, better data flows and innovation are reshaping how people and businesses move money. But the harder question now is not whether the system is changing – it is whether it is becoming resilient as it does.
Hearing from global payments and data expert David Birch in Tāmaki Makaurau earlier this week was inspiring as always, but also emphasised the need to keep resilience high on our agenda as an industry.
Recent global events have brought into sharp focus how quickly economic infrastructure can be disrupted, constrained or weaponised. Payments systems now sit at the intersection of cyber risk, geopolitical tension and global dependency. Efficiency and openness remain critical — but they are no longer sufficient on their own.
Resilience is no longer a future consideration. It is present-day design thinking.
Payments systems are operating under converging pressures. Cyber threats are escalating in scale and sophistication. Disruptions – natural, technical and geopolitical – are more frequent and less predictable. Global connectivity brings efficiency, but it also increases exposure. At the same time, artificial intelligence is accelerating automation and decision-making, raising new questions about authorisation, consent and accountability across the ecosystem.
These forces are not unfolding one at a time. They are stacking.
In this environment, modernisation cannot be judged by speed or functionality alone. Faster systems that are also more fragile increase risk: not just for individual organisations, but for everyone who relies on shared infrastructure. As with energy, resilience only becomes visible when it is missing. Similarly, payments resilience is best achieved through strong coordination among independent participants operating to shared standards and governance – a role where industry leadership, supported by Payments NZ, is critical.
Resilience today means more than uptime or recovery times. It is about adaptability: how systems perform when assumptions fail, dependencies are stressed, or disruption is deliberate rather than accidental. It is about understanding where risk sits, and how it shifts across an interconnected system.
One of the most significant changes underway in payments is the evolving role of trust and identity. As digital systems increasingly act on behalf of individuals – through automation, delegated authority and AI-driven decisions – trust can no longer sit at the edges. Digital identity is becoming core infrastructure, determining who can instruct whom, under what authority, and with what accountability.
This shift is reflected in emerging global thinking about financial system design, including models that position identity alongside settlement and messaging as foundational infrastructure. It is also driving international work on shared standards for verifying and approving transactions initiated not by people, but by software acting on their behalf.
These developments have implications well beyond technology. They affect governance, assurance, accountability and trust. They raise system-level questions about shared dependencies – and about which capabilities need to be designed collectively rather than competitively.
Aotearoa enters this phase with important advantages. We have strong institutions, high levels of trust, a collaborative ecosystem and active payments modernisation already underway. Significant work is being done across industry and government to strengthen capability, interoperability and security.
The challenge is not a lack of effort or intent. It is ensuring that resilience is treated as a core system objective – not a secondary outcome of innovation.
No single organisation can manage this alone. As with energy security, the resilience of the payments system is only as strong as its weakest shared dependency. That is why resilience cannot be bolted on later. It must be built into modernisation choices from the outset through common standards, clear governance and coordination across the ecosystem.
Resilient systems are not monolithic. They are deliberately diverse across rails, providers and modes of operation. Diversity is not inefficiency; it is strength when conditions deteriorate.
Artificial intelligence makes this even more critical. As digital systems increasingly act on individuals’ behalf, efficiency gains must be matched with clarity around responsibility and trust. Once trust is lost, it is hard to restore.
Modernisation will continue. It must. But resilience will determine whether that change delivers long-term value or trades it for short-term fragility.
The real challenge for payments now is not moving fast but moving deliberately – with a clear view of the system we are shaping, and the trust it must sustain in an increasingly uncertain world.
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