Dr Catriona Wallace speaking at Curious Thinkers 2022.
Artificial Intelligence is the fastest growing tech sector in the world, valued at US $327 bn in the last 12 months. It will also remove 85 million and generate 92 million jobs in the next two years. But who is leading the ethics of this powerful technology? The tech giants? Not likely. Government? Trying but about 5 years behind. And now commentators such as Stanford regard ‘Ethics Everywhere’ as the number one technology strategy priority for organisations.
So what is Responsible AI and how do you do it? Dr Catriona Wallace will share best practices in Responsible AI as well as sharing some super useful case studies. And most importantly Dr Wallace will discuss how you can step into being an Ethical Leader.
Leveraging the data-rich capabilities of the New Payments Platform (NPP), PayTo delivers insight rich, convenient and trusted payment arrangements for merchants, businesses and government agencies, while consumers benefit from having more control and visibility over payments set up from their bank account.
As PayTo commences rolling out to payments service providers and financial institutions over the coming months it is set to modernise the way bank accounts are used for payments, underpinning innovation for years to come in how we pay and get paid. Representing a step change in account-to-account payments, PayTo is much more than just a real-time alternative to direct debit. PayTo streamlines in-app payments, card-on-file arrangements, funding for digital wallet and buy-now-pay-later services and recurring e-commerce payments.
Accessing PayTo
Payments service providers, fintech and enterprise interested in initiating payments themselves, or on behalf of another third-party, can connect to PayTo via Cuscal. As a market leader in the NPP, Cuscal has the scale, experience, technical knowledge and trusted industry position to help payments service providers, fintech and enterprise compete and succeed with PayTo.
Merchants, businesses and government agencies interested in offering PayTo as a payment option for customers can now access PayTo services through a payments service provider connected to the Platform. Some of the leading innovators on the Platform today have integrated with PayTo through Cuscal’s Payment Initiator Service, building on top of our service to bring to life new innovative PayTo propositions.
Azupay
Established in 2019, Azupay is an Australian fintech focused on payment solutions using the New Payments Platform (NPP) technology, specialising in real-time payments using NPP and PayID to help government, business and consumers pay and get paid faster. www.azupay.com.au
Eway
Eway is a global omnichannel payment provider, processing ecommerce payments for merchants through a secure and reliable online payment gateway that makes it easy to accept payments from anyone, anywhere, from any device. www.eway.com.au
Ezidebit
Ezidebit is one of Australia’s leading online payment solution provider specialising in securely collecting Direct Debit, BPAY, EFTPOS and real-time payments for businesses. www.ezidebit.com
Ezypay
As one of Australia’s leading subscription payment providers, Ezypay offers a suite of easy-to-use subscription management services through their cloud-based payment platform, making it easy for businesses to settle payments and generate revenue through a standalone web interface, or directly integrated into a range of industry specific partner platforms. www.ezypay.com.au
GoCardless
GoCardless is a global leader in account-to-account payments, helping businesses accelerate the collection and management of recurring and one-off payments directly from customers’ bank accounts. With a global payments network and technology platform, GoCardless processes US$30 billion of payments for 65,000 businesses across more than 30 countries every year. www.gocardless.com
Monoova
Monoova supports scaling businesses with large, and often complex, ongoing transaction flows to fully automate how they receive, manage, pay and request payment of funds through one simple API integration. Its proprietary platform allows businesses to access a variety of payments functions, comprehensive reconciliation and reporting options and entirely customised real-time data. www.monoova.com
Paypa Plane
Australian fintech Paypa Plane helps banks and PSPs rapidly evolve product offerings without changing existing infrastructure through it’s simple ‘plug-in’ over the top bank-grade platform and white-label solutions, helping banks and PSPs create closer, more valuable and long term relationships with their small and medium business customers. www.paypaplane.com
Zai
Zai helps mid-market and enterprise-level business customers in the world of integrated financial services automate complex payment workflows and reconcile pay ins and payouts, helping them operate more effectively by saving time and money so they can scale and grow. www.hellozai.com
Cuscal was one of the founding financial institutions that established the New Payments Platform (NPP), Australia’s real-time payment system, and enabled over 60% of the financial institutions that were live on Day 1.
Since that time, Cuscal has strengthened its position as the market leader in NPP services, building a strong foundation of clients, industry relationships, expertise and scale over the last five years.
Cuscal currently:
Provides access to the NPP for over half of all financial institutions and payment service providers on the platform that offer real time payments to their customers
Processes 18% of payments made and 19% of payments received on the NPP
Cuscal is working closely with a large group of banks, payments service providers and software providers to support the ramp up of PayTo over the next few months. Cuscal’s PayTo development and implementation project has included many financial institutions and PSPs who wish to drive payment innovation and improved customer experiences using PayTo.
Cuscal is able to support a wide range of capabilities. We are about enabling competition. We provide services that let our clients innovate and develop their businesses. It has been a rewarding process to work with our financial institution and payment service provider clients to enable them to be the early adopters for PayTo.
The first group of financial institutions and payment service providers integrating with PayTo through Cuscal will go-live between July and September, followed by fast followers between October and December. The gradual ramp up of PayTo is expected to be completed in 2023 with full industry adoption.
Cuscal’s NPP infrastructure, scalable solution design and modular API services have made it possible for both existing and new clients who are focused on investing in innovation for their customers, to extend their NPP services to access PayTo, ensuring they are at the forefront of future payments innovation across subscription and bill payments, ecommerce and in app transactions, embedded finance and account funding, and the bulk disbursement of funds.
Cuscal has also partnered with software providers to ensure that Cuscal’s NPP Payments and PayTo services are integrated seamlessly into all clients’ digital channels to deliver an optimum customer experience.
Cuscal’s expertise and scale has also attracted clients who are nimble, innovative and focused to take advantage of one seamless onboarding to enable them to be first to market with Cuscal’s NPP Payments and PayTo services.
James Foster, Chief Executive Officer, Ezypay, commented:
We chose to partner with Cuscal as we knew they could deliver on our requirements to be live with PayTo on Day 1. We are a leading subscription payments fintech and it’s comforting to know that Cuscal’s vision for the future of payments in Australia is strongly aligned with ours.
NPP’s PayTo will be a new, digital way for merchants and businesses to initiate real-time payments from their customers’ bank accounts while allowing customers to see and control all recurring payments through their account. With the introduction of PayTo from mid-2022 all financial institutions that offer customer-initiated real-time payments will need to make significant changes to their back-office processes and technology in order to support receiving and actioning PayTo messages and payment initiation requests.
Ben Vivoda, Head of Client Services and Nathan Churchward, Head of Product Emerging Services, from Cuscal met virtually with members of the SAM Network to discuss this next phase of the NPP and the opportunities that PayTo will create.
When the New Payments Platform (NPP) rolled out on Tuesday, 13 February 2018 uptake was gradual as financial institutions rolled out NPP payment functionality to different customer segments and channels. However, as real-time payments have become more ubiquitous and innovative payment service providers have been enabled on the NPP, the growth trajectory of the platform has gone from strength-to-strength.
As one of a very small group of payment service providers to be enabled on the NPP, payment automation specialist Monoova recognised the potential of the platform early, partnering with Cuscal to access the platform and automate many of the manual processes that occur ‘before’, ‘after’ or ‘around’ payments which can be an obstacle to growth for scaling businesses.
From mid-2022 the next phase of growth for the platform commences with the launch of PayTo, enabling a broad range of use-cases which will provide a springboard for future payments innovation. Once again Monoova will be at the forefront of NPP-enabled innovation, with Monoova’s clients to be amongst the first in Australia to be able to initiate payments from a funding account with the payer customer’s authorisation.
This case study looks at how Monoova has innovated on top of Cuscal’s NPP and PayTo solutions to bring to life truly unique propositions that make managing business payments easy, providing clients with access to a true end-to-end payment automation solution that leverages all the capabilities of the NPP as well as Cuscal’s scale, expertise and trusted industry position to initiate, process and receive real-time payments.
We are pleased to announce that Queensland Country Bank has selected Cuscal as their single payment’s services provider.
Queensland Country Bank needed to find a partner who could help them aggregate all their payment service requirements, including Cards, Switching and Payments.
Their key objectives were to simplify their contractual arrangements, streamline operational processing and deliver products and services in a consistent manner across their entire customer base.
With an eye on the future, it was also important to Queensland Country Bank to find a partner who could understand their strategy, and who could demonstrate a clearly articulated roadmap to support it.
Cuscal prides itself on our speed to market and proven track record in enabling first to market solutions (e.g The Pays and NPP). We are also deeply committed to continuing investment in innovation to enable clients in being early adopters of new capabilities such as PayTo services. We are excited to be partnering with Queensland Country Bank to support them in bringing these services to their customers and look forward to a successful partnership – Bianca Bates
The teams from Cuscal and Queensland Country Bank have already started working closely together on the transition plan, with a view to have this work completed in 2022.
We are looking forward to a successful partnership with the team at Queensland Country Bank.
END
The face of payments in Australia has changed dramatically over the last twenty to thirty years, with the pace of change set to accelerate as technological advancements revolutionise the way we make, receive and request payments.
As the most frequently requested capability for the New Payments Platform (NPP), enabling the capabilities required to support third-party payment initiation from bank accounts has been a key priority for the payments and banking industry. Known as PayTo, this service will leverage the infrastructure of the NPP to drive the next phase of growth for the Platform.
PayTo will lead the use of embedded, pre-authorised payments from bank accounts in Australia, supporting a diverse range of payment use cases. It will provide consumers and businesses greater confidence, certainty and control over account-to-account payments as they are moved seamlessly into the background.
While PayTo will be available from mid-2022, when shifts in payment technology occur you want to be at the front of the queue to gain a first mover advantage over competitors. To help payment service providers and enterprises plan for the introduction of PayTo this white paper looks at:
The origins of real-time payments in Australia and the future directions for the NPP;
The rapid uptake of payment initiation in the UK under Open Banking;
The value PayTo will deliver to consumers and businesses and what the user journey looks like from the end-user perspective;
The role different participants play in the PayTo ecosystem; and
What Cuscal is doing to enable the PayTo services that are required by payer banks and payment initiators.
Format: White paper
Audience: Payment service providers and enterprises that process a large volume of payments
Estimated reading time: 20 minutes
As cyber-attacks continue to rise, Alastair MacGibbon from CyberCX shared his expertise at Curious Thinkers 2021 about how to make cybersecurity about humans in the fight against cybercrime.
In this session, Alastair shares his knowledge gained from his time as the Head of Australian Cyber Security and as Australia’s first e-Safety Commissioner and Special Adviser to the Prime Minister on Cyber Security.
He discusses the key players in cybercrime, how slow responses from tech vendors and patchy hardware supply exposes us to increasing risk and reveals how cybercriminals exploit the weaknesses in the cybersecurity chain – simple human mistakes.
Watch the video and discover what can you do to create a cyber-resilient operation and workforce. Listen to Alastair and learn how you can be better prepared to respond to increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks.
Keynote: ‘Making cybersecurity about humans in the fight against cybercrime’ with Alastair MacGibbon, CyberCX.
In this Curious Thinkers 2021 panel on Open Banking, we heard from industry leaders Scott Farrell, Jamie Leach and Rob Hale led by moderator Kieran McKenna talk about how you can capitalise on the Australian Government’s pivot to a digital economy.
The session explores how the government intends to enhance the Consumer Data Rights’ functionality, leverage it to support the new digital economy and make it safer, more effective and inclusive. It wants to encourage organisations to become data recipients so it can persuade millions of consumers to share their data. This, in turn, will fulfil their end goal of creating a robust digital economy.
So, what can you do to unlock value from the government’s refreshed Open Banking agenda? Hear from Scott, Jamie and Rob as they share their insights into building on the government’s plan from a regional bank, regulatory and industry perspective.
Watch the video and discover what can you do to take advantage of the government’s plans to accelerate the rollout of the Consumer Data Right and create real and long-lasting data-driven customer relationships.
Panel session: ‘Building on the government’s Open Banking agenda to create powerful data-driven customer relationships’ with Rob Hale, Regional Australia Bank, Jamie Leach, FDATA and Scott Farrell, King & Wood Mallesons.
At Curious Thinkers 2021, we learned how to navigate customer-led digital innovation in a panel session led by Cuscal’s Chief Client Officer and Deputy CEO Bianca Bates with 86 400’s Travis Tyler, Square’s Samina Hussain Letch and Westpac’s Di Challenor.
The session explores how customer-led innovation is becoming a competitive battleground in every sector. Especially considering a survey by Accenture found that while 93% of enterprise-level executives think innovation is critical to their business, only 34% believe they had a well-defined customer-led innovation strategy in place.
So, what can you do to unlock the value of customer-led innovation? Hear from Travis, Di and Samina as they share their insights into building a customer-led culture from a global, local and start-up perspective.
Watch the video and discover what customers now expect, get a sense of what’s possible and learn how you can build a culture of digital innovation.
Panel session: ‘Navigating the competitive battleground of consumer-led digital innovation’ with Bianca Bates, Cuscal, Travis Tyler, 86 400, Samina Hussain-Letch, Square Australia, and Di Challenor, Westpac.
