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Bianca Bates is now Chief Client Officer & Deputy CEO

Posted on by Uberbrand

Craig and Bianca in front of Cuscal logo

We are pleased to announce the appointment of Bianca Bates as Deputy Chief Executive Officer of Cuscal.

Bianca joined Cuscal in July 2014 as General Counsel and Company Secretary before pivoting her career to pursue more commercial responsibility and deeper relationships with our clients in her role as Chief Client Officer.

Whilst Bianca will continue in her current role, her title will change to Chief Client Officer & Deputy CEO in recognition of her expanded role of being Craig Kennedy’s delegate when he is unavailable.

In addition to leading our Product and Service teams, Bianca will take a more leading role in Cuscal’s engagement with industry bodies, regulators and shareholders.

Commenting on the appointment, Cuscal Managing Director Craig Kennedy said: “From the feedback that I have received from our Board, Shareholders, Clients and Staff over the past six years, I am confident that Bianca will continue to excel in her new expanded capacity as Chief Client Officer and Deputy CEO.

Please join me and our Board of Directors in congratulating Bianca, as she continues to advance her career at Cuscal.”

Bianca has held several senior roles during her time at Cuscal, 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 within large public and private US and Australian companies. Prior to Cuscal, she worked in senior legal and compliance company secretariat roles with Genworth, GE Capital and DLA Phillips Fox.

The network effect of PayID as a driver of customer engagement

Posted on by Marketing Team

In July 2020, the New Payments Platform (NPP) celebrated the registration of the 5 millionth PayID. In reaching this milestone I thought it would be interesting to look at the correlation between PayID registration and customer use and engagement. An analysis of the data we’re seeing for payments processed by Cuscal’s NPP solution tells a really positive engagement story.

Cuscal provides NPP services for 40 financial institutions that operate more than 50 banking brands. Partnering with Identified Institutions and NPP Participants our clients range in size, serve a variety of customers and are geographically distributed across Australia, offering a good representative sample of the Australian banking customer base. In fact, Cuscal processes more than 20% of all NPP payments and Cuscal’s clients have registered more than 25% of the 5 million PayIDs.

Our personal banking clients have been very successful in promoting PayID registration and Osko® to their customers, and now these banks, credit unions and their customers are benefitting from the convenience of making and receiving payments in real time.

Here are some interesting shifts that have happened between January and July 2020 in the transactions that Cuscal has processed for our personal banking clients.

Receiving payments
While the overall number of PayIDs registered is increasing, what is even more valuable are the numbers that show customers are actively sharing their PayID with others when they wish to receive money to their account and are receiving Osko payments with increasing regularity.

  • In July 2020, customers received an average of 4.6 payments to their PayID, up from 3.9 payments in January 2020.
  • 14% of customers receive at least one payment each month to their PayID.
  • PayIDs that received at least one payment increased to 173,000 (25% up on January 2020).
  • 9% of inward NPP payments are initiated using a PayID.

Looking beyond the payments that are received using a PayID, the numbers show that customers with a PayID also receive more NPP transactions generally, indicating that they are more engaged with their bank and the use of their account.

  • Customers without a PayID received an average of 3.3 NPP payments to their account a month.
  • When a customer has a PayID the average number of NPP payments received increases to 4.6 a month.
  • Since January, this represents an increase of 24% for customers with a PayID and only 9% for those without.

Making payments
Because PayID usage increases once people see how convenient it is, it’s interesting to note that customers that have a PayID also tend to make more payments overall.

  • Customers with a PayID make 4.6 payments per month from their account compared to customers without a PayID that make 3.6 payments.
  • Since January 2020, this is an increase of 24% for customers with a PayID and only 9% for those without.

Why this is important for banks
As technology continues to transform many aspects of our daily lives, and digital adoption accelerates in response to COVID-19, customers see the value in being able to manage their everyday banking needs at their fingertips. The ability to make or receive payments in real time from their accounts using the NPP with Osko and PayID are the types of services that customers now expect to find in digital banking. Banks that have actively promoted PayID and Osko services to their customers are their accounts and using their digital banking services. Ultimately this is leading to greater customer engagement and satisfaction.

By Nathan Churchward, Head of Emerging Services

Cuscal is the oldest Fintech in town

Posted on by Rachael Shupe

Picture of Bianca Bates FinTech Australia Podcast Episode 018 with Cuscal’s Chief Client Officer, Bianca Bates and Tier One People’s Dexter Cousins talking about Cuscal and the journey the organisation has taken since the 1960’s. It turns out Cuscal is the oldest Fintech in town!

Cuscal is the largest independent provider of payment solutions in Australia and behind many firsts in Australia, from the first to issue a scheme debit card in 1982, the first to launch Visa Debit PayWave in 2013, the first to enable clients to offer Apple Pay, Google Pay and Samsung Pay in 2016-2017 to the first to go live with New Payments Platform launching 30 clients on day 1 in 2018. Cuscal’s payment history is impressive.

Bianca also discusses Cuscal’s culture of being client focused and having a strong focus on employee experience.

Cuscal is looking for people who will work as one team, be accountable for their role, product, strategy, are outcome focused and bring energy to make a difference.

Listen to the podcast.

Open Banking is much more than a compliance exercise

Posted on by Marketing Team

Open Banking and open data

The economic, regulatory and technology landscape in banking and payments is constantly changing. This can lead some people to a kind of change fatigue, where each change is just another one for the pile. While this view is understandable, it can lead you to underestimate the impact of those changes which have much greater and longer-lasting impact. There is one change, coming soon, which will completely reshape banking and payments. I’m talking, of course, about Open Banking – the first application of the Consumer Data Right facilitating an economy-wide consumer-directed data transfer system.

What will this mean in terms of competition?

In the digital age there are heightened expectations about “experience” and how various elements of our life can be seamlessly integrated. An environment of open data, applied in a reciprocal manner, is essential to meeting these heightened expectations. Over time, we think that organisations that are unable to both facilitate and leverage open data will risk becoming irrelevant.

If you think about retail banking today, the ability to compete on product differentiation, price or distribution is very limited. Customer experience remains the greatest opportunity to compete.

This is one of the things that many of Cuscal’s banking clients do incredibly well and are rightfully proud of. However, the digital experience that their customers have has to be constantly improved and refined and the effective application of consumer data will be absolutely key to the future of their success in this area.

When is the right time to enable Open Banking?

It may be tempting to sit back and wait for more progress and certainty in relation to Open Banking and open data. I don’t think this approach is the right one for most financial institutions.

It’s going to be next to impossible to get the timing exactly right for Open Banking.

You will likely either be too early or too late in relation to Open Banking, so you will need to make a deliberate choice about which of these outcomes you want for your organisation.

If you decide to be early, it’s important to move on from compliance-type-thinking towards thinking about the opportunity to compete, enhance the relevance of your organisation and improve your relationship with your customers.

Collaboration will be the key.

The nascent open data economy will be big, complex and uncertain. Exactly how things will develop over time is unclear. I don’t think any single organisation has all of the skills and resources needed to fully maximise this opportunity. Partnering with complementary organisations across the Open Banking value chain, to solve a specific problem or remove friction points, will be crucial to success.

There are a number of related developments that also need to be taken into consideration to create value for customers and enable safe and efficient access to data, such as digital ID, consent management, and the role that NPP may play in Open Banking and open data. We expect developments around open data to progress to payment initiation over time, as they have in other areas.

Just as we have done with the New Payments Platform and The Pays (Apple Pay, Google Pay and Samsung Pay) Cuscal will leverage our strengths across payments data exchange and the development of innovative customer-focused mobile solutions to enable clients to participate in Open Banking, providing support across multiple areas in the lead up to implementation and beyond.

To fulfil the ambition of the ACCC and Treasury of giving customers more control over their information, choice in their banking and convenience in managing their money we will provide clients and others with an opportunity to leverage economies of scale and multi-client solutions to interact with the open data economy.

We are at the beginning of an “always on” and “open data” world. Empowering people to take control, and maximise the utility of, their data will be the foundation of this future.

Read our white paper (published in collaboration with King & Wood Mallesons and KPMG) to find out more of our thinking.

By Craig Kennedy, Managing Director of Cuscal

Cuscal an Employer of Choice for Gender Equality

Posted on by Rachael Shupe

Craig Kennedy and Employer of Choice for Gender Equality (EOCGE) logo

Cuscal is delighted to be awarded with the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) Employer of Choice for Gender Equality (EOCGE) Citation for 2018-2019. We are one of 140 recipients in Australia and one of 28 from the Financial and Insurance Services industry.

Our strategies, processes and policies were assessed to ensure that Cuscal is creating a culture where women and men are represented, valued and rewarded equally. Leadership, accountability and focus on gender equality are all required for this citation.

The EOCGE shows our commitment to gender equality across a number of areas, including:

  • Creating and embedding flexible working opportunities
  • Parental leave programs that support both primary and secondary caregivers
  • Networks and programs designed to increase women in leadership roles, inclusion and equal opportunities
  • Formal gender pay analysis

The Voice of Payments

Posted on by Uberbrand

Virtual assistants are changing the way people shop, bank and interact with businesses. From chatbots to voice assistants, businesses and their customers are seeing the benefits of automating and simplifying transactions and interactions.

Learn more about voice assistants and other innovations driving change in payments around the world in the Global Payments Innovation Playbook which we produced in collaboration with PYMNTS.

The NPP is starting to realise its potential

Posted on by Marketing Team

We have been thrilled by the reaction to the recent article which broke the news about the New Payments Platform (NPP) collaboration between Cuscal and Assembly Payments. We’ve both been fielding lots of enquiries from companies keen to emulate Carsales and so we thought we’d write this article to tell you a bit more about how the collaboration works and the best way to bring the benefits of real-time payments to your customers.

We think the NPP is a fantastic opportunity for any e-commerce company that is sending large amounts of money around or just needs to move money fast. Whether this is large volumes of transactions (or just large transactions) the benefits are clear – immediate, verified payments with detailed descriptions will enhance customer experience and minimise enquiries.

What is the NPP and how do you connect?
The NPP is the new, decentralised payments infrastructure which allows participating financial institutions (including Cuscal and the RBA) to move money between each other in seconds, 24/7. To become part of the infrastructure (a ‘Participant’) is a lengthy, complex process and you are required to be an Authorised Deposit-taking Institution (as it’s a regulated environment and requires access to RBA settlement facilities). However, most companies don’t need to do this. They can get the same benefits, more cheaply and easily by connecting to one of the Participants.

What levels of connection and capability are there?
The second official level of connection to the NPP is called an ‘Identified Institution’. The collaboration between Cuscal and Assembly Payments is big news because Assembly is the first company that is NOT a financial institution to be officially recognised as an Identified Institution. This means Assembly can register and create PayIDs for others and offer NPP services to its own customers, like Carsales.

Complicated? It doesn’t have to be.
While the background, and some of the terms, are a bit complicated, actually using the NPP is getting easier. Most companies will connect through APIs. The New Payments Platform has recently published its API framework which enables third parties to get a greater understanding of the platform and what it can do, using a sample API Sandbox.

Each NPP Participant will support their own APIs based on the NPP API Framework. Cuscal has already released REST APIs, which is how Assembly accesses NPP and Osko services to move money in real-time between Cuscal and other financial institutions.

Using the NPP is even quicker and easier for those companies that don’t need to become an NPP Identified Institution but want the benefits that come with NPP and Osko payments. For example, Carsales is enabled for NPP services through the Assembly platform.

Which path is right for you?
It depends on what you want to do.

  • Talk to Cuscal if you want to become an Identified Institution, like Assembly, and offer PayIDs and NPP services to your own customers. This path will suit businesses such as financial institutions and payment service providers.
  • Talk to Assembly if you would like a full suite of multi-channel payment solutions including real time NPP payments, PayIDs, underwriting, fraud and KYC services. This path will suit many online businesses, especially corporate enterprises, marketplaces and ecommerce platforms.

If you’re confused as to which path is right for you, just get in touch with either one of us and we’ll steer you in the right direction!

By Nathan Churchward, Cuscal and Simon Lee, Assembly Payments

My key takeouts from our Curious Thinkers event

Posted on by Uberbrand

Bianca Bates and Leda Glyptis

We recently held our inaugural client conference ‘Curious Thinkers’ where local and international experts presented on the topics that are front of mind in the payments space. My key take out from the Conference was that now, more than ever, it is essential for financial services organisations to clearly understand their customers’ expectations. They then need to be able to respond quickly to those expectations while managing an increasingly complex compliance and regulatory environment.

Here are some other learnings which may help navigate the current landscape:

The importance of picking the right partners

Collaboration and partnering are essential to succeed in the current market. Leda Glyptis’s thoughts on partnership resonated with me. Leda highlighted the options available to financial institutions in this age of digital disruption and greater open-ness. I loved Leda’s tips on picking the right partner and which partners to avoid at all costs:

  • Vampires – companies that fundamentally undermine or steal our business
  • Cheese sandwiches – companies that add no value (this came from rowing, where you can tell the value of each rower by replacing them with a cheese sandwich and measuring the difference in boat speed)

Fraud prevention for the future

Nuno Sebastiao, the global CEO of our fraud partner Feedzai, outlined the capabilities of the Feedzai platform, including machine learning and AI. Nuno and his team’s presentations during the day reinforced our decision to roll out the Feedzai fraud solution. It is a best-in-class fraud monitoring tool that provides us and our clients with a holistic, and highly granular, view of each end customer. The ability to intimately know someone’s spending patterns, and so detect when something is out of character, will be crucial in preventing future fraud.

The role of regulators in a time of change

“Change is not new, of course… But what is unsettling for today’s financial institutions is the sheer pace of change.” Wayne Byres provided a timely and useful perspective on the challenges facing regulators and financial services companies today. In particular, he highlighted:

  • The role APRA plays role in promoting stability, but not protecting regulated entities or standing in the way of change
  • The necessity for many financial institutions to increase their technology budgets to allow new technologies while maintaining their current systems
  • APRA’s position on cloud usage, including safety and security

On the way to open banking

Scott Farrell, the Chair of the Australian Government’s Review into Open Banking, reminded us of the principles behind Open Banking: “to give customers more control over their data leading to more choice in banking and more convenience in managing their money.” Whilst many are concentrating on the compliance requirements that sit with open banking, we are really focussed on how we can enable some real growth opportunities for our clients in an open banking environment.

The ‘youthquake’ is coming – we’d better be ready.

Rocky Scopelliti outlined how the millennial generation views work, banking and the digital world. Two points which struck me in particular were:

  • Millennials are motivated by ‘purpose’ and ‘social equity’ more so than other generations.
  • Being online, or connected, is “as natural to them as breathing”. A great reminder of how crucial digital and mobile banking is to our future.

Innovation is over-used, but under-utilised.

We all talk about how important ‘innovation’ is, but if we’re honest, most of us don’t back up our words very well with concrete action. Charlotte Rush gave us practical, simple and scientifically validated methods to cultivate innovation. To turn this into action we then had a group ideation session on how to collaborate better to enable a seamless customer experience, from Cuscal to client to customer. We will be taking the best of these ideas forward in the year ahead.

Real-time payments have ramped up.

Now that all the major banks are live we’ve seen a 40% jump in New Payments Platform (NPP) transaction numbers between July and August. Adrian Lovney outlined the NPPA’s priorities for the coming years, including an expansion in reach, volume and capability. The ‘consent and mandate’ service will be particularly exciting. It will make direct debits simpler and more transparent, removing one of the major obstacles to account switching. It will also allow services like Osko’s ‘Request to Pay’ and pave the way for open banking. We will bring these innovations to our clients and their customers as quickly as possible.

How to lead in the digital age.

Stephen Scheeler emphasised how important it is for business leaders to understand the fundamentals of digital. If we fail to understand digital, we open the door to competitors that do (like the way Netflix rapidly overtook Time Warner). The points which stuck with me were:

  • The importance of data. Most companies only use about 5-10% of the data they hold on their customers, but it holds the keys to solving customer problems.
  • Be ‘obsessed’ with customer experience. Our customers buy things which solve their problems, if we don’t understand their difficulties we are taking them for granted.

The link between digital identity and open banking

Digital identity is rapidly evolving and there is no consistent global standard. Steven Bankston, from Visa, updated us on Europe’s leadership and outlined Visa’s plans for a global platform to incorporate digital identity into a seamless payments experience. What really struck me was the inextricable link between digital identity and open data. The interplay between the two will create both opportunities and threats in coming years.

As I reflect on the two days I’m hopeful that it has helped us to inspire closer collaboration with our clients and partners for the year ahead. We can only succeed if our clients succeed and I believe that our first conference has started some great conversations.

 By Bianca Bates. Chief Client Officer

Curious Thinkers conference wrap-up

Posted on by Uberbrand

Curious Thinkers event location shot in Sydney with logo

Our inaugural Curious Thinkers conference, held on 24 & 25 September 2018, took our clients on a journey through innovation, thought leadership, product solutions and more to inspire thinking about the future of payments.

Over the course of the two days we covered a wide range of current and future-focused topics – from what’s happening globally in payments and how that impacts us here in Australia, to open banking, real-time payments, customer experience and how to drive innovation within organisations.

An exceptional line up of international and local thought leaders shared their expertise and insights, including: Dr Leda Glyptis (Chief of Staff, 11:FS), Nuno Sebastiao (CEO, Feedzai), Steven Bankston (Senior Director, Product Development Visa), Stephen Scheeler (The Digital CEO), Charlotte Rush (Innovation Consultant, Inventium), Rocky Scopelliti (Futurologist & Author), Scott Farrell (Partner, KWM) and many more.

Read the Conference highlights from our Chief Client Officer, Bianca Bates.

View video content from Curious Thinkers via the links below:

  • Curious Thinkers 2018 Showreel
  • Day 1 Playlist featuring Charlotte Rush , Rocky Scopelliti, Steven Bankston, Stephen Scheeler,   Adrian Lovney (NPPA), Bianca Bates (Cuscal), Wayne Byres (APRA), Panel Discussion: Unlocking the potential of real-time payments, and Global Innovation Insights in partnership with PYMNTS.com presented by Bianca Bates and Sarah Whiteway (Cuscal)
  • Day 2 Playlist featuring Leda Glyptis, Nuno Sebastiao , Scott Farrell, Andrew Twaits (Bendigo Bank) and Panel Discussions: Open Banking Deep Dive, and Unlocking new tech to drive business growth.

P&N Bank launches instant digital cards

Posted on by Uberbrand

People using mobile phones

P&N Bank is Cuscal’s first client to launch instant digital cards, using the Cuscal Virtual Card API set. The APIs allow companies to provide their customers with new or replacement digital cards into their mobile wallet within seconds. Without a digital version of the card, customers can be without access to their money for days or even weeks.

Cuscal’s Virtual Card APIs are the most comprehensive instant card issuance solution in Australia. No other financial institution in Australia currently provides instant card issuance for new and replacement cards and gives its customers access to the full virtual card to allow online payments.

Instant access to the full card number is particularly useful as it not only allows customers to pay for things in person, but also buy things online. This is particularly useful for customers who are travelling and their cards are lost or stolen. They can simply log into their mobile banking application or internet banking, order a new card and continue their holiday uninterrupted.

Cuscal Head of EFT, Acquiring and Digital Lauren McCormack said Cuscal was thrilled to have been able to help P&N Bank deliver this great advancement to its mobile and digital banking capability.

“We see it as a real win-win for both P&N and its customers, saving time and money for everyone involved. We also hope that it will help P&N Bank customers get access to their money more quickly and easily in those awful, stressful situations we all find ourselves in when our cards are lost or stolen,” she said.

Not only does instant card issuance have great customer benefits, it is also very useful for financial institutions and other companies that issue cards. They can save money by not needing to physically mail out PINs to their customers and also start earning revenue sooner by giving customers quicker access to their money. In the future, companies may decide to save even more money by not issuing physical cards at all.

Financial institutions and their customers can realise even greater benefits if they combine Cuscal’s Virtual Card API with the Card Control API. Financial institutions can decide to enable controls on a card (eg restricting spend for instore/contactless payments) until the physical card has arrived with the customer. This reduces the chance of someone intercepting a card while in the mail and then being able to make fraudulent payments.

Cuscal’s solution currently works for Visa and eftpos credit, debit and prepaid cards. Cards can be ‘provisioned’ (enabled in a mobile wallet) to Apple Pay, Google Pay and Samsung Pay. The solution also works for any cards making payments via eftpos and Visa, companies do not need to be current clients of Cuscal to make use of the API’s capabilities.