Acorns Australia rebrands as Raiz Invest; Westpac and Assembly Payments team up
Acorns Australia, an app that uses small change to invest, has rebranded as Raiz Invest.
Westpac
New Zealand trials open banking
ASB, BNZ, Datacom, Paymark, Trade Me and Westpac join the pilot.
Banking tech round-up: 22 January 2018
Our southern stars are Bank Zero, Westpac and Commonwealth Bank of Australia.
Three of Australia’s largest banks partner to create payment platform Beem
Three of Australia’s largest banks, The Commonwealth Bank (CBA), National Australia Bank (NAB) and Westpac have partnered to create Beem – a new mobile peer-to-peer (P2P) payments platform.
SocietyOne surpasses $300m in loans issued
Australian P2P lending platform SocietyOne reached a milestone this week. The company has surpassed $300 million in loans issued since it was founded in 2011, reports Finovate (Banking Technology’s sister company). During a time when P2P lending in the US is under scrutiny, SocietyOne is reporting an increasing demand for P2P lending in Australia. In the […]
ANZ, Westpac and IBM trial blockchain for bank guarantees
Australia and New Zealand-based banking group, ANZ, and Westpac have teamed with IBM and shopping centre operator Scentre Group to use blockchain to digitise the bank guarantee process for commercial property leasing. The trial used distributed ledger technology (DLT) to eliminate the need for current paper-based bank guarantee documents, resulting in a “single source of […]
Four Australian banks sign up for Swift’s global payments innovation
Four Australian banks, Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ), Commonwealth Bank, National Australia Bank (NAB) and Westpac are now live or planning to implement Swift’s global payments innovation (gpi) initiative. According to Swift, these Australian banks represent over 80% of cross-border payments flow for Australia. The banks all say the same stuff – so […]
Westpac takes first steps in cloud core system plan
Australian bank Westpac has gone live with the first stages of its tech overhaul in Australia to move its core processes from its own premises and into the cloud. According to the Australian Financial Review, it “has already moved two core banking processes to the cloud since the end of March, and intends to have […]
Apple Pay defeats Australian banks in payments punch-up
Apple Pay has emerged victorious in its long-running feud with four domestic banks over their permission to collectively bargain with Apple and boycott Apple Pay. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has issued a determination denying authorisation to the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), Westpac, National Australia Bank (NAB), and Bendigo and Adelaide Bank […]
Top fintech stories this week – 6 January 2017
Catch up on Banking Technology’s top five fintech stories of the week – all in one place! The first weekly news round-up of 2017. Happy 2017! Let it be a year of discovery and success.
St George Bank live with new core banking system, Celeriti
St George Bank, Sydney-based subsidiary of Westpac, has finally gone live with new core banking software, CSC’s Celeriti. The project has been underway since 2010.
Westpac picks Oracle and Accenture to build new enterprise-wide customer data hub
Westpac has embarked on a major project to roll out a new data integration solution – Oracle Customer Hub – bank-wide. It is understood that SAP was Oracle’s main contender for the deal.
Apple bites back over Australian banks’ “cartel”
You can tell cartels to go to hell if you’re Apple. The firm has responded strongly to three of Australia’s big banks’ plans to team up for negotiation deals on digital wallet access. According to the Australian Financial Review, the request from the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, National Australia Bank and Westpac to “collectively negotiate […]
Westpac backs Reinventure start-ups with another $50m
Australian bank Westpac has doubled its investment in venture capital firm Reinventure – with $50 million for start-ups. This is the second fund to be managed by Reinventure. Simon Cant and Danny Gilligan, the co-founders and managers of the first fund, are seeking to add another venture partner and some new staff to identify and […]
Westpac backs AI for digital banking
Australian bank Westpac is to trial the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in its digital banking systems, as it looks to automate customers’ queries. With the rise of digital banking, Westpac’s general manager of consumer digital, Travis Tyler, says it is looking at using “bots” to respond to customers’ simple questions. One example includes the […]
Amazon Web Services outage causes digital banking problems in Australia
A technical outage of the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud this weekend left many customers of Australian banks unable to use cards, ATMs and Eftpos terminals. The banks affected include Westpac, ME Bank and Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA). Some also pointed the finger of blame at payment providers such as First Data. Just a […]
Power to the people
The growth of peer to peer lending demonstrates that there is an alternative to the traditional lending model of banks. But can crowd funders ever replace the incumbents and do they enjoy long-run advantages or face being co-opted?
Westpac makes digital banking push through IBM private cloud
Australian bank Westpac has signed up IBM to assist a major digital banking push in New Zealand. The bank plans to use IBM’s private cloud technology to build mobile services and social media presence.
