Rocky Scopelliti, Author & Futurologist at Curious Thinkers 2018 in Sydney talking to Cuscal’s clients about Youthquake 4.02 – a whole generation and the new industrial revolution.
Watch the video to find out about the different characteristics millennials have from other generations in relation to digital technology. How this informs everything they do and the opportunities and threats that this presents for organisations that align their businesses to this influential new generation.
Charlotte Rush, Innovation Consultant, Inventium at Curious Thinkers 2018 in Sydney talking to Cuscal’s clients about how to unlock growth through innovation.
Watch the video to learn insights on the difference between true innovation (which adds value) and change for change’s sake (little value). In addition, learn the importance of identifying consumer frustrations to unlock opportunities for innovation.
Cuscal has appointed Bianca Bates to the role of Chief Client Officer, as part of Cuscal’s Leadership Team. This role replaces the role of General Manager, Product & Service, which Bianca has been acting in since February 2018.
Commenting on the appointment, Cuscal Managing Director Craig Kennedy said:
The Cuscal Board has confirmed Bianca’s appointment after an extensive search for the right candidate. I’m delighted that Bianca was successful and will continue her career at Cuscal after her success in previous roles over the past four years.
The change in title reflects our commitment to partnering with our clients and delivering a great client experience. Bianca brings significant experience in financial services and our business to this role, including, crucially, a great understanding of the needs of our clients.
Bianca has held a number of senior roles at Cuscal since she joined, including Acting General Manager, Product & Service, General Counsel & Company Secretary, Acting General Manager Shared Services and Head of Client Services. She has over 20 years’ experience in financial services with large and complex US and Australian companies, both public and private. Prior to Cuscal she worked in senior legal and compliance company secretariat roles with Genworth, GE Capital and DLA Phillips Fox.
We are launching a new rediATM Finder app for both Android and iPhone devices today. This app has a new look and feel, is easier to use and has improved filtering and search functionality.
New change PIN ATM finder
A highly desirable new feature of the app is it now allows users to find a rediATM, where they can change their PIN. The app user just needs to belong to a financial institution which is a part of the rediATM network.
The rediATM network is made up of more than 90 financial institutions, of all sizes, including NAB, BOQ, CUA, People’s Choice Credit Union and Suncorp.
rediATM Finder app
The rediATM Finder app is available for free in the App Store and Google Play.
Current users of the rediATM Finder app, will just need to update to the new version of the app.
Disclaimer: 1. There is no fee for the rediATM Finder app, but an Internet connection is required to download the application. 2. Data charges may apply to both the downloading of the application and the use of the application on your mobile device. Check with your relevant service provider for more details.
Sydney, 28 June 2017: Suncorp and Cuscal have today signed a partnership agreement for Suncorp to join the rediATM network from 1 August 2017. The rediATM network is made up of more than 90 financial institutions, of all sizes, including NAB, BOQ, CUA, People’s Choice Credit Union, and now Suncorp.
This will mean that more than 11 million cardholders will now have direct-charge-free access to the rediATM network, up from ~10million. The ATM network will also grow from over 3,000 ATMs to around 3,300 ATMs Australia-wide. There are rediATMs in more locations around Australia than any other banking ATM network.
Commenting on the news, Cuscal MD Craig Kennedy said:
“We’re very pleased to welcome Suncorp to the rediATM network. It will make the network stronger and is great news for our 90 plus financial institution members as well as their 11 million cardholders who have fee-free access to the rediATM network.
We’ve been providing safe, convenient, reliable ATM services for more than 30 years and with our recent investment in refreshing our entire rediATM network we’re looking forward to doing so for many years to come.”
Suncorp CEO Customer Platforms, Gary Dransfield, said from 1 August, 2017, Cuscal Limited will become the exclusive provider of Suncorp’s ATMs.
“Suncorp customers will soon have fee-free access to more ATMs, in more locations than ever before, following the announcement of this new partnership,” Mr Dransfield said.
“This partnership meets all of our requirements as a business, and is a great result for customers who will benefit from increased ATM access and functionality enhancements across the rediATM network.”
Cuscal media contact
Jo Savill jsavill@cuscal.com.au 0447 555 018
Suncorp media contact
Alexandra Foley 0419 794 294
Real-time payments just got a whole lot realer with the two public-facing brands of the New Payments Platform announced today. Adrian Lovney, CEO of NPP Australia Limited, revealed in a recent interview that the first thing consumers are likely to notice when the service goes live is their bank inviting them to register for a PayID. The other new financial brand consumers can expect to see from October is Osko. With this combined public release of the Osko and PayID brands, financial institutions participating in the New Payments Platform can begin to think of the ways Australian consumers will soon interact with these affiliated brands via their personal banking experience.
The announcement of Osko and PayID raises a number of questions important to both the industry and, in time, the end user. In particular, I was curious to know how PayID and Osko relate to one another and, perhaps more importantly, why do we need both brands in the first place?
Well, the industry has known for some time that BPAY’s overlay service was chosen as the first to be used in the New Payments Platform. It was identified as the initial way to showcase the New Payments Platform’s capabilities in as early as October 2015. The service’s brand promise has been well articulated from the outset: to provide businesses and consumers with an immediate, versatile and data-rich service to complete their everyday payments. The difference now is we know its public name: Osko.
How then does PayID fit within this scheme – how does it feature and what does it do that Osko cannot? Put simply, PayID is the brand name of the centralised addressing service that will enable direct funds transfer in an unprecedentedly personal and convenient, yet secure way. But this still leaves some wondering, how will it all work? PayID will work by linking financial accounts with recognisable and memorable pieces of information such as your phone number or email address. This will eliminate the need to select or re-enter bank account numbers without putting the security of your banking details and other information at risk.
Where then does PayID sit within the brand hierarchy of the New Payments Platform? There’s an easy way to conceive this, which is that PayID is the brand for the addressing service that can and will be used to power Osko (and other overlay services down the track too). In other words, PayID will store smart addresses for payments but Osko is the hero brand, for the first overlay service anyway, which everyone is going to use to make real-time P2P payments conveniently and securely.
It’s early days yet but I wonder what can be made of the two brand names. In particular, the first time I heard Osko, it struck me as slightly unusual. Then I considered the names of other leading brands and how they were first received when they launched in the market. Google and Uber, for example, are two brands that have achieved universal resonance, yet they probably didn’t mean anything to you at first. They certainly didn’t for me. Now, however, we find that in our thirst for knowledge in a digital age, we no longer search for something – instead, we Google it. Equally, rather than riding in a hired vehicle to get us from A to B, we simply Uber it.
While my predictive powers are not strong enough to pinpoint the ways (or precisely when) Australian consumers will begin to use Osko and PayID synonymously with making an instant payment, I think we’ve lived through enough examples which show how this might happen. When BPAY developed the Osko brand in conjunction with brand and marketing specialists, feedback from the test groups was very positive. In the time that I have used the new name in conversation, which has been for a little while now, it has really grown on me. It seems to be hitting the mark with others too.
What will really work in Osko’s favour is the open invitation it has created for BPAY and financial institutions to collaboratively shape its meaning. This reflects BPAY’s intention for Osko to be a blank canvas that allows industry participants to co-create the meaning of the new brand in the lead up to its launch.
I expect that this approach to building its brand identity will increase buzz and drive discussion around the new value it creates for Australian consumers. When I consider the New Payments Platform in its broadest context, I am mindful that up until now it has often been talked about in terms which highlight the revolutionary nature of its service.
While this is not misleading, there is another, simpler lens through which we can understand the New Payments Platform and its two public brands now that they have been released, which is that they will collectively close a current gap in the Australian payments ecosystem – the gap being our lack of a simple, convenient service available 24/7 for individuals and businesses to request and receive payments without having to disclose their personal banking details.
By Nathan Churchward, Senior Manager, Payments
Sydney, 20 December, 2016: Today Wirecard AG and Cuscal announced they will be working together to allow Wirecard’s proprietary omni-channel payment processing platform to receive credit and debit card transactions in Australia.
Wirecard is a global technology group that supports companies to accept electronic payments from all sales channels. The partnership with Cuscal will allow it to offer Australian merchants its efficient method of online payment processing. Wirecard’s solution can be adapted to meet the individual requirements of each merchant, improving conversion rates at the point of check out.
Grigoriy Kuznetsov, Executive Vice President Global Financial Services at Wirecard, said:
We are delighted to expand our cooperation with Cuscal. This enables us to extend our global merchant acquiring solutions to one of the most important payment markets in the world and ensure that our customers can enjoy consistent service and seamless access to payment options worldwide.
Acting General Manager, Product & Service at Cuscal, Colin Sultana said:
We’re really pleased to be supporting Wirecard in Australia. We’re all about using our expertise and scale to help existing companies grow as well as to support new companies to enter the market. By working with companies like Wirecard we’re driving competition in payments, increasing innovation and giving businesses greater choice which will ultimately benefit everyone.
Wirecard is one of many new companies moving into the Australian payments acceptance market, creating further disruption in the payments industry overall. Most are being drawn here by the allure of large and steady revenue streams and a population ready and willing to embrace new payment technology.
Media contact
Jake Waddell jwaddell@cuscal.com.au 0417 312 902
Cuscal has delivered its latest white-label mobile banking app for Android and iPhone devices which offers a simple, seamless and secure user experience.
The app’s new functionality includes the ability for users to block and unblock their card as well as enables fingerprint login for Android device users. The blocking feature allows users who misplace their card to temporarily block it via the app and then unblock it once they find it. The newly added biometric functionality allows Android users to verify their identity with a fingerprint and log-in to the app, in the same way as iPhone users already can.
New, streamlined in-app navigation allows users to pay a bill or transfer money directly from their accounts in app. Additionally, to help users familiarise themselves with the new features and make the most of its capabilities, the app comes with a built-in onboarding tour.
Cuscal’s Acting General Manager, Product & Service, Colin Sultana said:
“At Cuscal we’re all about making payments as simple as possible, so with this latest mobile banking app release we’ve made our app even easier to use, and more useful.
We regularly collaborate with our clients on developing our apps, to make sure we’re including features their customers really want, and we’ve incorporated their feedback in this latest release. The added biometrics and card blocking functionality puts control back with the user and the simplified navigation gives them greater flexibility around how they make payments. So far our app has been taken up by 13 Australian financial institutions and we have another nine who are going live in the coming months which is testament to quality of the app.”
The next release is expected in February 2017.
To find out more about our mobile banking app contact your account manager, or get in touch with Cuscal CallDirect via email calldirect@cuscal.com.au or phone 1300 650 501.
The Chore Scout apps are the latest addition to our innovative digital suite of products and are designed to work with our Mobile Banking & Payments app.
Developed by digital specialist Moroku, in partnership with Cuscal, the apps provide a way of strengthening relationships with existing customers and beginning new ones with the next generation of customers. It allows parents to set and track chores, transfer pocket money and for children to set savings goals – teaching children valuable financial literacy skills that can last a lifetime.
We recently took some of our clients on a whirlwind payments tour of London, Dublin, Stockholm and Edinburgh. Accompanying me were my colleagues Rachael Brigham and Zac Andrew and we also took some of our clients Matt Lobdell (Head of Strategy, CUA), Craig McMahon (COO, Teachers Mutual Bank), Chris Thornton (GM Product & Marketing, My State) and Kevin Kehoe (CFO, QTMB) along for the ride.
We learnt a lot about payments and about ourselves on the six-day tour (more than I can share in one blog!) but here are some of our highlights:
1.Incentivising customers to switch
While Australian FIs work to entice new customers, UK institutions are aggressively grabbing customers. Nationwide is attracting new customers by offering a GBP200 bonus payment to bank with them as well as high interest rates (5% on balances up to GBP 2500). Nationwide isn’t the only one snagging customers – Spanish-owned Santander not only offers high interest rates but gives 3% cashback to customers on household bills.
2. Europe’s open data laws could come to Australia
Australia’s recent Productivity Commission report on data access shows that we could be heading down the same path as Europe where 2018 will see the introduction of the Payments Service Directive 2 (PSD2). PSD2 mandates financial institutions to make cardholder data accessible to third-parties. It will mean that the end-user will own their own data and be able to choose who sees and uses this information. This move could be the first in a global shift.
3. Sweden’s cashless society is the way of the future
Sweden is incredibly ahead of the game when it comes to being cashless. Sweden’s average card usage per person puts them ahead of the rest of the world (with an average of 269 transactions per annum per person). A reflection of this shift is Sweden’s minimum age for debit card holders at just seven years of age! With cash payments making up just 20% of retail payments in Sweden compared to the European average of 71% this trend is only likely to continue. Visa Europe’s contactless payments trial at this year’s Eurovision Contest in Stockholm is definitely a sign of things to come.
Nordea, one of Sweden’s big four banks, is using an app-based loyalty program called Wrapp which has an impressive number of registered customers. Sweden also has its own answer to our New Payments Platform (NPP) called Swish. As of May 2016 half the Swedish population were ‘Swishers’. It’s a very useful case study for real-time payments in Australia.
4. Open loop’s potential to reduce cash usage
While the use of contactless is low in the UK compared to Australia, figures for commuters with an Oyster card on Transport for London’s (TfL) Underground paint a different picture. When 33% of Oyster PAYG users have already switched to contactless and over 1 million Visa journeys are conducted every weekday on TfL services, the potential for increasing contactless (and therefore cashless) travel is definitely there. In Australia, as cities move to open loop transport, opportunities for FIs to tap into this pool of contactless commuters means the possibilities to continue to reduce cash usage is huge. For example, could NSW’s Opal card become the next Octopus in Hong Kong? Watch this space.
5. Charities go cashless for spare change
If you’re anything like me you get this creeping sense of guilt when you see a charity collector shaking their tin and you don’t have any change. That’s now been solved. Visa, in conjunction with Save the Children, has developed a contactless handheld donation ‘tin’ in various forms including a face-to-face handheld terminal, a semi-attended desktop terminal and an unattended donation switch.
In Sweden Swish users can ‘swish’ a payment to their preferred charity all without reaching into their pockets.
6. Would you like a home loan with that?
Starting as a joint venture with the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) in 1997, Tesco Group bought out RBS in 2008 and today serves more than 7 million customer accounts and had an operating profit of over GBP 160M for 2015-2016.
As of August this year, Tesco Bank now offers its own mobile wallet – PayQwiq. It’s available in London and Edinburgh (so far) and enables users to earn loyalty points with their purchases (5 points for every GBP 4 spent). PayQwiq is in direct competition with leading mobile wallets by allowing shoppers to store their Tesco Clubcard and debit card information and pay up to GBP 250 in a single transaction (AUD$420). Tesco Bank’s formula is clearly working so keep an eye out for Coles and Woolworths replicating its model!
This trip was a whirlwind of four countries and eight flights, and it provided an enormous wealth of information.
It showed me that the Australian market can learn a lot from our European and British counterparts. It also taught me that while our population may be smaller, Australia definitely punches above its weight in terms of payments and should be proud of having one of the largest contactless markets in the world.
The idea that we must be willing to embrace change and payments technology was also reinforced during the trip. While the NPP may not happen overnight it will fundamentally change the way we make payments so we should be ready for it. Also using Sweden’s cashless model as an example we need to take technology in our stride. Change is, after all, as good as a holiday.
By Aaron Blackwell, Account Manager
