Eftpos gets Square as battle for mobile payments escalates
Mobile tradies and small businesses seeking to bypass steep credit card fees extracted by bank-owned payments terminals have scored a significant victory, with challenger payments provider Square revealing it has now ported eftpos functionality to its Australian machines. Made official on Monday, the tie-up between Twitter founder Jack Dorsey’s global payments play Australia’s 30-something electronic payments scheme opens the door for millions of people holding everyday bank payment cards fitted with contactless functionality to avoid the dreaded Amex. While it might seem like an incremental retrofit, the realpolitik of the eftpos-Squarer hook-up is actually way bigger. It means an untapped army of smaller merchants – think dog washers, craft brewers, […]
Wirecard brings its platform services around digital financial technology to Australia and New Zealand
Wirecard, the global innovation leader for digital financial technology, today announced its platform expansion in Australia and New Zealand. The Wirecard platform is now available in New Zealand for e-commerce services and Australia for omnichannel solutions. With this expansion, Wirecard is extending its ecosystem of real-time value added services around innovative digital payments in Oceania. This leverages on the global Wirecard strategy of digitizing payments worldwide as Australia is leading innovation in areas such as contactless payments, bill payments, digital commerce, and point-of-sale applications, and the market is ready to make the next transformation. Research and Markets found out that the Australian payment mix is shifting heavily toward electronic payments. […]
How Westpac is investing in fintechs and spending $1 billion on digital transformation
Westpac’s annual results show how far the bank has gone to transform itself into a digital showcase and how it has been heavily investing in the rise of disrupting fintechs. Out of a total investment of $1.4 billion, the bank spent more than $800 million in system upgrades, digital transformation, and innovation. CEO Brian Hartzer says the focus has been on delivering technology platforms, while simplifying and automating processes to make banking easier. “We have already migrated 100 applications onto our cloud infrastructure platforms which are now largely complete,” he says. “Additionally we have over 120 APIs in production and another 180 in development.” Among digital initiatives are Siri for […]
“Profitability can come later on”: Aussie fintech growing into a huge opportunity, despite ongoing talent pool challenges
Australian fintechs are on average a little older, a little more mature, and generating a lot more revenue than they were this time last year, but there are still challenges in the sector according to the EY FinTech Australia Census 2018, released this week. Following a survey of 151 fintechs across Australia, and a series of in-depth interviews, the report shows a maturing fintech market in Australia, with 43% of fintechs over three years old, compared to 31% in 2017 and 20% in 2016. While it’s clearly a good thing these companies are surviving — even thriving — this could also be indicative of a lack of early-stage fintechs following […]
JP Morgan’s Quorum blockchain opens new world of trading opportunities
A blockchain platform built by global investment bank JP Morgan is being used to “tokenise” gold bars to allow sustainable miners to earn a premium on global markets, an indication of new trading opportunities the disruptive technology will create over the coming decade. Blockchain technology, initially deployed to create bitcoin, is moving into production in major investment banks – but it’s not being used to move money. Rather, banks are using it to manage global liquidity, improve information inefficiencies and create “crypto” assets (other than currencies). JP Morgan has created an enterprise version of the Ethereum blockchain – known as Quorum – which allows for the operation of “smart contracts”, […]
“One of the strongest blockchain communities in Australia”: NEM Foundation opens blockchain hub in Melbourne
NEM Foundation is opening a new blockchain hub in Melbourne, to help startups understand how the technology could help their business, and to engage and educate the general public. The foundation, designed to promote the NEM blockchain platform and its cryptocurrency XEM, already has a hub in Brisbane, as well as in Westport, New Zealand, both of which opened within the past year. Speaking to StartupSmart, NEM Australia lead Jian Chan says Melbourne has established itself as “one of the strongest blockchain communities in Australia”. Jason Lee, NEM’s expansion director for Australia and New Zealand adds the hub is focused on encouraging uptake and development of blockchain technology. There is […]
Programmable money will be the trigger for governments to adopt blockchain
The original blockchain use case – bitcoin – involved making payments while circumventing government and banks. So there’s some irony that its latest local use case involves a big government agency and the country’s largest financial institution adapting the original blockchain to control how government payments are spent. But blockchain innovation is full of surprises. Like the internet itself, what was briefly a rebellious technology is fast becoming mainstream. The Australian Financial Review revealed today that Commonwealth Bank and the CSIRO’s Data61 unit have teamed up on a pilot that could see targeted payments made by the National Disability and Insurance Scheme (NDIS). The blockchain will be a private version […]
Australia’s first next-gen digital bank is live
South-Melbourne based technology developer, Ferocia – presented the wide range of benefits this next-gen digital bank will offer customers.
