How Bankwest Halo payment ring lets you leave the wallet at home
Bankwest customers across Australia are now able to tap and go using the Bankwest Halo, Australia’s first payment ring. The award-winning contactless payment ring, which is waterproof to 50m, has been produced as part of Bankwest’s focus on empowering customers with new and innovative ways to pay. Launched in January of this year, the device has been named the Most Innovative Card Product and the Most Innovative Retail Banking Product at the Australian Retail Banking Awards. Bankwest Managing Director Rowan Munchenberg said the ring had been developed in response to the changing needs of customers. “’Customers’ needs are always changing and in today’s digital world they increasingly expect smooth transactions […]
Morgan Stanley likes the look of Fintech these days
Many people these days are wondering where to put their investments these days, and there’s no shortage of options. Morgan Stanley, in fact, offered up one outlook that will be welcome to those of us out here: fintech is actually very attractive. Fintech, or financial technology, is a fairly broad frontier that covers just about everything from e-wallet systems to payment processors to even credit card companies. In fact, Morgan Stanley executive director James Faucette pointed out Visa and Mastercard as the kind of companies that could absorb virtually any negative development in the economy. Faucette also notes that investors are “…underestimating the secular push from digitization” and the growing […]
Open banking gains momentum
As open banking gains momentum, the future of the industry will see a move away from product offerings in favour of customer experience and engagement, a panel of industry experts told a Temenos conference. The panel of experts told the conference that technology has placed the industry in a constant phase of reform, and the move to open banking would see a significant shift away from the big four banks to address the needs of underfunded sectors like small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Piers Balmer from business lending funding service for SMEs, Judo Capital, said they no longer used the term ‘product’, and instead opted for terms like ‘engagement’ and […]
OnDeck Australia secures $75m Credit Suisse loan
Small business lender OnDeck Australia has secured a $75 million funding line from Credit Suisse, the latest partnership between fintech players and established institutions. The subsidiary of the New York-listed OnDeck Capital said the asset-backed revolving credit facility would be used to refinance OnDeck Australia’s loan book and to fund new loans. The facility is due to mature in June 2020. On Deck Australia managing director Cameron Poolman said the lender was striving to lower its cost of funding, origination and to build a “leading credit model”. He said the online small business lending market is growing at a faster pace than it did in the US at a similar stage in […]
Credit Simple launches Money Simple
Credit Simple, the fintech where every Australian and New Zealander can get their credit score and credit file for free, forever, has launched free online budgeting tool Money Simple. In a world first, Money Simple brings together open banking data with credit scores to form a single, unified view of a person’s financial life in one spot. Money Simple aims to leverage consumer data rights and open data rules to give consumers visibility on their financial position on a single platform. Money Simple is powered by Proviso, an open banking platform that draws data from Australian financial institutions. Credit Simple CEO David Scognamiglio said Money Simple was at the leading […]
Explainer: What is Ripple?
Not just a poor man’s Bitcoin, the currency exchange network Ripple is the dark horse of fintech. Ripple is far more than simply a “poor man’s Bitcoin”. Despite the host of cryptocurrency copycats on the market right now, Ripple isn’t simply copying the status quo. This currency exchange and remittance network actually has a lot more complexity to it than first meets the eye. To help you wrap your head around Ripple, we’ve compiled a comprehensive guide to fintech’s most exciting cryptocurrency. Read on to find out everything you need to know about the enigmatic currency exchange service. What is Ripple? Ripple, the successor to Ripplepay, was released in 2012 as […]
Small and mighty: Meet the challenger banks nipping at the heels of the big four
A slew of challenger banks are poised to burst onto the Australian finance scene, in a bid to take on the big four, and change the way that Aussies think about banking. Typically offering cloud-based banking services without a bricks-and-mortar branch in sight, these so-called ‘neobanks’ say they will provide a more personal banking service, designed to be more in line with what modern bank customers want, whether that’s near real-time updates on spending and saving, or personalised lending for small business customers. Who are the challengers? They’re all still awaiting banking licences, but there are four major challenger banks coming out of Australia, at varying stages of readiness. They […]
Fintech’s double-edged sword
Ultra-low interest rates and fintech were two of the major threats to the stability of the financial system identified by the global regulator in its recent annual economic report. “Sustainable profitability is especially important at the current juncture: banks have been facing the dual challenge of persistently and unusually low interest rates eating away at their net interest margins, and growing competition from new technology-savvy players – big tech and fintech,” the Bank for Financial Settlements reported. “Once [fintechs] do have the scale to disrupt they will be regulated as if they were part of the established order.” According to Fabio Panetta, the deputy governor of the Bank of Italy, […]
