New FinTech Uno Home Loans lands a $16.5 million investment from Westpac
New Australian FinTech company ‘Uno’ has landed a $16.5 million investment from Westpac after its success in the digital mortgage service in the past few months. The major bank investment is set to expand the company even further as customers are discovering the benefits of having a greater power in the home loan search process. Chief Strategy Officer at Westpac, Gary Thursby, said “uno’s success has been impressive and we’re seeing its potential to become a serious player in the home loan market”. Westpac has been involved with uno since the concept phase and Mr Thursby is pleased to announce the investment where Westpac will be a strategic investor at […]
Fintech moves in when banks fail their customers
In November the Monetary Authority of Singapore will hold a major fintech festival as part of the regulator’s push to promote financial services technology. It’s all part of what broker CLSA calls the Singapore government’s $35 billion campaign to promote technology in the country. A recent Ernst & Young report ranks Singapore fourth overall behind Britain, California and New York in terms of global fintech ecosystems. Australia came in fifth in the survey, behind Germany but ahead of Hong Kong. Australia ranked third behind Britain and Singapore in terms of fintech policy, including regulatory regimes and tax policy. It ranked fifth in terms of talent and capital and seventh in […]
ANZ Apple Pay users hit 250,000
Around a quarter of a million ANZ Banking Group customers are understood to be using Apple Pay, a number that exceeds the bank’s expectations four months after the service was launched. It’s also a number that’s set to rise, with ANZ to announce on Tuesday that its Mastercard customers are also able to load their credit cards into Apple’s digital wallet. Apple has restricted ANZ’s reporting of the number of cards that have been loaded onto Apple Pay since it jumped ahead of its rivals at the end of April and struck a deal with the tech giant to allow ANZ Visa and American Express cards to be loaded onto […]
ANZ Bank ups cloud focus with open networks for fintech collaboration
ANZ Banking Group has upped the ante in its adoption of cloud-based services in order to pursue a more flexible technology strategy, with Netflix-developed software to stop outages and the door left open to collaborate more openly with emerging fintech start-ups. The bank’s general manager of consumer digital technology Christian Venter told The Australian Financial Review it has significantly increased its use of cloud platforms – most notably the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud – to host more dynamic content on its websites and mobile apps, and was designing new systems that would allow access for data sharing with external organisations. The move to open up systems comes amid a […]
Banks to develop new digital cash unit for settlement
Four of the world’s biggest banks have teamed up to develop a new form of digital cash they believe will become an industry standard to clear and settle financial trades using blockchain, the technology underpinning bitcoin. UBS, the Swiss bank, pioneered the “utility settlement coin” and has now joined forces with Deutsche Bank, Santander and BNY Mellon – as well as the broker ICAP – to pitch the idea to central banks, aiming for its commercial launch by early 2018. The move is the first example of a group of leading banks coming together to co-operate on a specific blockchain technology to harness the power of decentralised computer networks and […]
Coles backs Westpac, CommBank, NAB, and Bendigo and Adelaide Bank in Apple Pay fight
Retailers including Coles have thrown their support behind a push by several big banks to put their rivalry aside and negotiate as a bloc with Apple over its digital payments service. Apple’s current constraints on “digital wallets” provided on the iPhone threaten to stifle innovation and competition, the retail industry’s peak body told the competition watchdog. In what the banks say is a world first, Westpac, Commonwealth Bank, National Australia Bank, and Bendigo and Adelaide Bank are seeking an exemption from competition laws so they can negotiate as one, and launch a collective boycott of Apple Pay. The move, if approved, is intended to pressure the technology giant to allow […]
CBA accused of blocking fintech Acorns in password row
Commonwealth Bank of Australia has sent alarming emails to thousands of its customers who are engaging with fintech start-ups, warning that sharing internet banking passwords could invalidate the protection CBA provides from losses on accounts relating to fraud. But Acorns, which is competing with the banks’ retail wealth divisions, says CBA’s communication is designed to slow its rapid growth and thereby reduce competition. CBA is “cloaking with security messages a way of being anti-competitive to the whole fintech industry,” said George Lucas, chief executive of Acorns in Australia. “It is strategically targeted at fintechs they now see are growing, and we are a major driver of that.” Acorns, a US-based company that helps users invest spare change in exchange traded funds, has been growing its Australian users at around 2500 each week to around 130,000 since its local launch in February. Around 70 per cent […]
Banks resist fintech push for open data regime
If banks were required to open their customer data to competitors, economic growth would be bolstered through financial services competition and customer service would be improved by allowing fintech companies to create better-priced financial products, argues Fintech Australia, an industry group representing financial technology start-ups. The Productivity Commission’s review into ‘Data availability and use’ is looking at whether a system of “open APIs” [application programming interfaces] could be created along the lines of a new regime in Britain to allow competitors to plug directly into data sets held by banks, such as transaction account activity. Fintech Australia has asked the commission to recommend an “open banking API” regime be mandated […]
