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- This Week in Fintech
Happy Friday!
Welcome to the ninth instalment of This Week in Fintech. Thanks for subscribing 🙌. Sorry this one was late, I was out yesterday chasing the Northern Lights in Oklahoma 🌌. This week was a busy one so lets get into it!
The low down ⏱️
CBA makes 4 major announcements with launch of a DEFT competitor, a new Square reader competitor, launch of PowerBoard and a partnership with Bendigo Bank, Mr Yum and me&u complete their merger, Amex is now supported on Hicaps terminals, Bonza rolls out PayTo for flight payments, NAB partners with Plenti to offer loans, WLTH has acquired Mortgage Mart of Australia and received $14 million in funding, N26 partners with Upvest to launch trading features in 2024, Klarna partners with Cathay Pacific to offer BNPL and credit and also receives credit authority in the UK + much much more!
This week in Australia 🇦🇺
Commonwealth Bank makes 4 major product announcements
CBA takes on Macquarie’s DEFT with new rental payments platform
CBA has announced a new payments platform aimed at revolutionising the rental payments platform to offer an end-to-end experience that no other major bank has offered to date.
The platform is currently in a pilot phase and will be rolled out at scale in the March quarter next year.
CBA has partnered with IDEMIA and Soft Space to launch Smart Mini
CBA has worked with IDEIMA and Soft Space to launch a Square Reader competitor - Smart Mini. Allowing you to take payments for a side hustle or a full time business the reader pairs to the Smart Mini app and allows you to take payments anywhere.
The reader is on sale for $59 and has a Mini Dock for $39. Processing rates are a flat rate of 1.1% on all Mastercard, Visa, AMEX, JCB, UnionPay and eftpos transactions.
Customers who sign up from 1 December 2023 will have the cost of the reader waived.
Paydock and CBA partner to launch PowerBoard
Paydock has partnered with CBA to launch a new e-commerce payments processing platform - PowerBoard. PowerBoard gives Australian merchants more flexibility and control over the payment options they provide to customers. This partnership is significant as it represents the first time a major bank has integrated a third-party payments platform like Paydock's to deliver an enhanced payments experience through a single API.
Using Paydock's technology, PowerBoard allows CBA to offer merchants a unified access point to multiple payment methods and providers. This streamlines the payments process for merchants while also providing customers with more choice in how they pay. The partnership was announced on December 5th 2022 and shows how major banks are working with fintechs to roll out new products faster.
The platform supports taking payments online through credit/debit cards, local account to account payment schemes, digital wallets (Apple and Google Pay) and Buy Now Pay Later (Afterpay).
CBA rolls out NameCheck availability to Bendigo Bank and Up
CBA has announced partnerships with Bendigo Bank and fraud prevention company Satori to trial CBA's NameCheck technology. NameCheck uses payment data and advanced technology to check if account details entered for transfers look legitimate.
Since launching within their own mobile banking app in March 2023, it has prevented over $38 million in scam payments and reduced mistaken payments by over $100 million.
Bendigo Bank and Up will add NameCheck to its mobile app, while Satori will incorporate it into fraud monitoring tools used by major Australian companies and government organisations. The collaborations aim to take a "whole of ecosystem" approach to combating scams across the financial system.