Press Releases Archives

Cuscal enables clients to offer Apple Pay

Posted on November 15, 2016October 27, 2023 by Rachael Shupe

Sydney, 15 November 2016: Cuscal, Australia’s leading independent provider of payment solutions, today enabled 31 of its clients to offer Apple Pay. Apple Pay offers an easy, secure and private way to pay that’s fast and convenient.

Our clients offering Apple Pay include People’s Choice Credit Union, Credit Union Australia and Teachers Mutual Bank. With all clients together this makes over 4 million cardholders. This continues our history of enabling our clients and their customers to use the latest payment innovations.

“Our clients were clear, they wanted their customers to be able to use Apple Pay. So we made it happen. Today we have enabled 31 clients to offer Apple Pay and we expect even more in coming months. Our digital wallet (Pays) solution connects our clients’ cards to Apple Pay and it also connects our market-leading white-label mobile banking app directly to Apple Pay,” said Craig Kennedy, Cuscal Managing Director.

Apple emphasises that security and privacy is at the core of Apple Pay. When you use a credit or debit card with Apple Pay, the actual card numbers are not stored on the device, nor on Apple servers. Instead, a unique Device Account Number is assigned, encrypted and securely stored in the Secure Element on your device. Each transaction is authorised with a one-time unique dynamic security code.

Australians are world leaders in adopting contactless payments and Apple Pay is the next step in making payments even more convenient, safer and easier to use.

Apple Pay is easy to set up and users will continue to receive all of the rewards and benefits offered by credit and debit cards. In stores, Apple Pay works with iPhone SE, iPhone 6 and later, and Apple Watch.

Cuscal’s 31 clients which made Apple Pay available to their customers and members today are:
Bank Australia, Bank of Sydney, Beyond Bank Australia, Big Sky Building Society, Australian Unity, CAPE Credit Union, Central West Credit Union, Illawarra Credit Union, Catalyst Money, Community First Credit Union, Northern Beaches Credit Union, Credit Union Australia (CUA), Credit Union SA, Defence Bank, EECU, First Option Credit Union, Goldfields Money, Goulburn Murray Credit Union Co-Op, Holiday Coast Credit Union, Horizon Credit Union, Intech Credit Union, Laboratories Credit Union, My State Bank, The Rock, Northern Inland Credit Union, People’s Choice Credit Union, Police Bank, Customs Bank, QT Mutual Bank, Select Encompass Credit Union, South West Slopes Credit Union, Sydney Credit Union, Teachers Mutual Bank, UniBank, The Mac (Macarthur Credit Union), Warwick Credit Union and Woolworths Employees’ Credit Union.

For more information on Apple Pay, visit: http://www.apple.com/au/apple-pay/

Media contact:
Jake Waddell jwaddell@cuscal.com.au 0417 312 902

The latest mobile banking app has arrived

Posted on August 1, 2016October 27, 2023 by Rachael Shupe

Sydney, 1 August 2016: Cuscal’s latest white label full-mobile banking app is here, bringing with it a lighter, brighter look and feel and added functionality for a smoother user experience.

One of the new in-app features allows users to order a new card with a flick of their finger. A new Android Pay step-up feature also allows users with an Android device who wish to add a card to their mobile wallet to complete in-app verification rather than needing to receive a text, email or contact customer service.

The new look display has a lighter background for easier visibility while access to account information, balances and transactions is readily available through the app. From the sign-in page users can access simple balances for up to three nominated accounts or view their transactions and account details by signing into the app. The vertical navigation also allows users to easily see their accounts page at a glance.

Cuscal’s Head of EFT, Acquiring and Digital, Colin Sultana said:
“We’re really pleased to announce the release of our latest mobile banking app which has been chosen by 20 Australian financial institutions so far.

We’re helping financial institutions to keep up with today’s ever changing digital landscape while allowing them to compete on a level playing field with bigger banks. By partnering with us, financial institutions are able to pool their resources so we can develop customised products that work for them and their customers. By doing the app development ‘heavy lifting’ we let them focus on what they do best – banking and keeping their customers happy.”

The next release is expected in October 2016.

Media contact
Jake Waddell jwaddell@cuscal.com.au 0417 312 902

Android Pay launches in Australia

Posted on July 14, 2016October 27, 2023 by Rachael Shupe

Sydney, 14 July 2016: More than 25 financial institutions are connecting to Android Pay via Cuscal today and more will follow in coming days and weeks. Overall, this will enable more than 2 million Visa and Mastercard credit and debit cards to pay with Android Pay.

Cuscal clients will be among the first financial institutions in Australia to connect to Android Pay via its ‘Pays solution’. Cuscal’s Pays solution can connect all Australian-issued Visa and Mastercard debit or credit cards directly to Android Pay, while also being flexible enough to incorporate connection to other mobile wallets and schemes in the future. Cuscal’s market-leading white-label mobile banking app also connects directly from Android Pay.

Colin Sultana, Head of EFT, Acquiring and Digital at Cuscal said:

“Fast, simple, convenient mobile payments are rapidly becoming one of the key differentiators between financial institutions. That’s why we’ve been working closely with Google for many months; to make sure our clients are able to connect to Android Pay. It’s been a complex project where we’ve worked with many different financial institutions and we’re thrilled with the end result. We’re looking forward to seeing what our clients’ customers think.”

Cuscal’s mobile banking app has already been chosen by 20 Australian financial institutions. As well as supporting Android Pay it also has its own contactless payment technology and includes functionality like biometrics, overseas travel notifications, change PIN, activate card and report lost and stolen card. The app is updated four times a year with new functionality which helps financial institutions keep pace with the rapidly changing digital world while also allowing them to compete on a level playing field with banks that have much larger individual budgets.

Media contact
Jake Waddell jwaddell@cuscal.com.au 0417 312 902

Cuscal takes 11pc stake in software company Moroku

Posted on June 2, 2016October 27, 2023 by Rachael Shupe

Sydney, 2 June 2016: Cuscal and Moroku, a Sydney-based developer of mobile banking and payments software, have agreed terms which see Cuscal take a circa 11% stake in Moroku and a seat on its Board. Cuscal’s investment is part of a broader capital raising by Moroku.

Moroku was founded in 2012 by Colin Weir and Dave Durbin. Its main business is creating immersive digital experiences to help banks connect better with customers, so increasing their competitiveness and ability to acquire more customers. In the financial services area Moroku has already developed two innovative products:

Game System – a platform for next generation financial service applications that employs motivational theory and gamification to build financial literacy
Marrakash – a cloud-based POS and business platform that supports multiple payment instruments and can be white-labelled by financial institutions

Moroku will be using the capital injection to fund further business expansion (Moroku currently has clients in six countries) and will draw on Cuscal’s financial and payments expertise, and deep integration within the Australian banking industry, to help with this expansion.

Speaking about the investment, Cuscal MD Craig Kennedy said:

The partnership with Moroku is a good fit for Cuscal. Their expertise in gamification and app development will help broaden our own capabilities and allow us to enhance our digital and mobile offering, which is an increasingly important part of our clients’ product suite.

Moroku CEO, Colin Weir said:

There has been a significant increase in banks and insurance companies showing interest in partnering with smaller technology partners across the Asia-Pacific region in the last six months. The strategic relationship we are building with Cuscal brings us great distribution and experience at an industry level, enabling Moroku to play to its strengths around innovation, designing and deploying customer centric, digital, financial applications.

Media contact
Jake Waddell jwaddell@cuscal.com.au 0417 312 902

Cuscal joins Hyperledger Project

Posted on May 20, 2016October 27, 2023 by Rachael Shupe

Sydney, 20 May 2016: Cuscal was yesterday announced as one of eight new members to join the Hyperledger Project, the collaborative blockchain effort being led by the Linux Foundation. The Project has grown 70% in membership since February this year.

The Hyperledger Project aims to build a core blockchain that can be used in a variety of industry solutions including financial services, Internet of Things, supply chains, manufacturing and technology. Companies like IBM, Accenture, J.P. Morgan, Digital Asset, Intel and ANZ are already part of Hyperledger. R3, the company which leads a consortium of financial service businesses researching potential uses of blockchain, has a seat on Hyperledger’s board.

Commenting on the announcement, Brian Parker, General Manager, Emerging Business at Cuscal said:

“We’re very pleased to join the Hyperledger Project and be able to contribute our expertise in payments and real-time processing to an exciting project.

Blockchain feels a bit like the internet felt in its earliest days. It’s a genuinely new technology, with exciting potential and clear underlying value, but we don’t yet know exactly how that value will be realised. Distributed ledger technology has the potential to greatly improve legacy systems and processes and we believe that working collaboratively is the best way to achieve this goal.”

Read more about the Hyperledger Project.

Media contact
Jake Waddell jwaddell@cuscal.com.au 0417 312 902

Cuscal partners with Square for Australian entry

Posted on March 8, 2016October 27, 2023 by Rachael Shupe

Sydney, 8 March 2016: Square today announced that it would be selling its point of sale solution in Australia, its 4th market after the USA, Canada and Japan.

Cuscal has been assisting Square every step of the way on its Australian journey and Cuscal Managing Director, Craig Kennedy, said of the news:

“We’re very pleased for Ben and the team at Square and delighted that the Square Reader is now on sale in Australia. It will make it possible for anyone in Australia to accept card payments by turning their smart phone into a POS device. We think thousands of new Australian merchants will start accepting non-cash payments who previously thought it was too expensive or too difficult. At Cuscal we’ve always supported offering Australians increased choice in the way they pay for things – it increases competition, keeps prices down and levels the playing field.”

Speaking about the partnership with Cuscal, Ben Pfisterer, Australian Country Manager, Square said:

“Square is excited to work with the team at Cuscal, who demonstrate the same commitment to innovation and small business that Square does. Our entry to Australia is strengthened by our partnership with Cuscal which is a world class end-to-end payments leader with over 40 years’ experience in the local market.”

For more information about Square go to https://squareup.com/au

Media contact
Jake Waddell jwaddell@cuscal.com.au 0417 312 902

Cuscal will connect clients to Android Pay Day 1

Posted on December 16, 2015October 27, 2023 by Uberbrand

Sydney, 16 December 2015: Cuscal, one of Australia’s leading providers of end-to-end payments solutions, is pleased to announce that it will be ready to connect its financial institution clients to Android Pay as soon as it launches in Australia.

Cuscal’s clients include over 70 Australian financial institutions to which it supplies a range of products including credit and debit cards and a mobile banking app with HCE contactless payments capability. All of these will be able to connect to Android Pay.

Commenting on the launch of Android Pay Adrian Lovney, Cuscal’s General Manager of Product and Services said:

“It’s a very exciting time for mobile payments in Australia and Cuscal is right in the thick of it. We have been working with Google to make sure that our clients will be able to connect to Android Pay from Day 1, giving them a level playing field to compete with the big banks for their share of customers’ mobile wallets.”

Media contact
Jake Waddell jwaddell@cuscal.com.au 0417 312 902

Wirecard & Cuscal announce Australian cooperation

Posted on May 29, 2015October 27, 2023 by Uberbrand

Aschheim (Munich), 29 May 2015: Wirecard Group, with its New Zealand subsidiary GFG Group Limited, today announced that Cuscal Limited, one of Australia’s leading payment services companies, has selected Wirecard as solution partner for its next generation acquiring and issuing processing business.

Cuscal, established in 1992, provides payment services to more than 100 banks, mutual sector organisations, airlines and other organisations in Australia. Cuscal processes around 14 percent of EFT transactions in Australia as well as managing one third of Australia’s ATMs and over 5.5 million debit, credit and prepaid cards.

Cuscal’s clients include the majority of Australia’s credit unions as well as some of Australia’s largest banks and the domestic operations of foreign banks. Increasingly Cuscal is becoming the preferred partner of choice to service the interests of non-financial services clients, such as Virgin Australia or the Queensland Government.

“We are very happy to announce this business relationship with Wirecard and are eager to launch innovative new services to our clients on this new platform,” stated Craig Kennedy, Managing Director at Cuscal. “With Wirecard, we are introducing best-in-class in payments technology to the Australian market, which will extend our portfolio of innovative services in an ideal way.”

Wirecard’s acquiring and issuing platform represents the result of almost two decades of international payments experience, supporting all debit and credit card schemes on an integrated high-performance real-time transaction platform. Wirecard’s solution is based on a modular architecture and is supporting the latest innovations in card and mobile payments.

“We are thrilled to be working with Cuscal, a company that has been a driver for innovation in Australian payments for decades. Cuscal and Wirecard are both at the forefront of technological innovation in the payments sector, in particular driving the deployment of next generation payment products. Together we will be able to serve this rapidly developing market even more effectively,” said Andreas Kazamias, Managing Director of GFG Group.

Wirecard Media Contact
Wirecard AG
Maren Brandt Tel.: +49 (0) 89 4424 1425 Email: maren.brandt@wirecard.com

Media contact
Jake Waddell jwaddell@cuscal.com.au 0417 312 902

Shoppers switch to smart phones

Posted on May 21, 2015October 27, 2023 by Uberbrand

Sydney, 21 May 2015: Customers using their Android phone for ‘tap and pay’ purchases are most likely to be buying their groceries or a takeaway meal, spending an average of $27 per transaction, according to new data to be released at a national conference in Melbourne today.

In July last year, customer-owned financial institution CUA became the first banking provider in the Asia-Pacific to roll out a free mobile app using HCE technology, which allowed customers to ‘tap and pay’ with any compatible Android phone. The mobile app – CUA redi2PAY – was developed by CUA’s payments provider Cuscal and works on any NFC-enabled Android phone running on KitKat 4.4 or later.

CUA Head of Customer Insights Chris Malcolm and Cuscal Head of EFT, Acquiring and Digital Colin Sultana will share insights into how customers are using their ‘mobile wallets’ as part of a case study on the redi2PAY implementation at the Australian Cards and Payments Summit taking place at the Melbourne Convention & Exhibition Centre today.

Mr Malcolm said groceries were the top retail category for redi2PAY transactions, followed by fast food, petrol stations, restaurants/ dining and alcohol purchases.

“Interestingly, the top five retail categories for redi2PAY mobile payments are the exact same retail categories where CUA customers make the highest number of Visa PayWave purchases using their debit card,” he said.

It appears that CUA’s early adopters of mobile payments technology are literally swapping their debit card for their mobile phone, using it for the same kind of purchases as they would have made with a traditional plastic card.”

Customers using redi2PAY are also using it more frequently – the number of customers using redi2PAY more than 35 times per month was around three times higher in March than it was six months earlier in October. The number of customers using mobile payments semi-regularly (5 to 14 times per month) is up 63 per cent for the same period.

The data also shows:

Customers spend an average of $27 per transaction when using CUA redi2PAY – the same as the average amount for Visa PayWave purchases.
The number of redi2PAY transactions spikes towards the end of the week (Thursday to Saturday). Saturday has the highest number of redi2PAY transactions, while
Sunday has the least. Visa PayWave transactions also peak on Saturday, while Monday has the lowest number of payments.
Most mobile payments occur between 12pm and 8pm, with a spike from 1-2pm. The trend is similar for Visa PayWave payments.
The number of redi2PAY transactions each month has increased by more than 16 per cent since September 2014.
December 2014 recorded the highest value of redi2PAY transactions for a single month, coinciding with the lead up to Christmas.

CUA and Cuscal have already been recognised in Australia and Asia as pioneers in mobile payments. A leading financial research company in Asia, IDC, recently named CUA redi2PAY as one of the top 25 mobile innovations in financial services for 2014-15.

“There is huge potential for this technology to fundamentally change how people pay for purchases,” Mr Malcolm said.

“People tend to take their smart phones everywhere they go and now, the need to also carry cash and cards in your wallets is becoming a thing of the past.”

He said approximately eight times more CUA customers now have a compatible Android phone which could be used for redi2PAY, compared to a relatively small group of customers who had the required technology when redi2PAY was launched 10 months ago.

“We’re seeing increased take-up of this HCE technology across the banking sector, as others follow our lead. The use of ‘mobile wallets’ will only continue to grow as customers become more familiar with the technology and its security features, and upgrade their Android devices to the latest models.”

Media contact
Jake Waddell jwaddell@cuscal.com.au 0417 312 902

Cuscal Shareholders Approve SPS Acquisition

Posted on November 13, 2014October 27, 2023 by Marketing Team

Sydney, 13 November 2014: The shareholders of Cuscal Limited (Cuscal), one of Australia’s leading providers of end-to-end payments, have today voted to approve the acquisition of Strategic Payments Services Pty Ltd (SPS).

According to Managing Director Craig Kennedy, the acquisition cements Cuscal’s unique market position as the only independent ADI licensed wholesale payments company to deliver banking capabilities and payments solutions across the entire spectrum of the payments value chain.

“I’m delighted Cuscal’s shareholders have approved this acquisition. Combining SPS’ capabilities alongside ours puts Cuscal in an excellent position within the payments market where innovation is the key to future success.

“Integrating with SPS means we can sharpen our focus and investment towards research, development and delivery of market leading technology, as well as continue to offer emerging players a neutral platform to operate from,” Mr Kennedy said.

The acquisition gives the combined entity more than 10 per cent of the Australian electronic funds transfer (EFT) market, thereby providing healthy competition and greater choice for clients. It also comes only months after Cuscal launched one of the world’s first HCE (Host Card Emulation) based mobile payments solution for Visa cardholders in Australia.

Managing Director of SPS, Simon Stephenson, welcomed the news.

“SPS and Cuscal are both strong, innovative payments businesses underpinned by dedicated and talented staff. I am confident the acquisition will create a new, unique and powerful player in the Australian payments landscape, delivering growth opportunities and significant benefits for the people and customers of both organisations,” said Mr Stephenson.

The combined entity will service more than 100 clients across a number of industries including financial institutions, mutual banks, credit unions, insurers, government departments and agencies as well as major retail corporations.

Under the deal, owners of SPS – Bendigo Bank and Mastercard – will take an approximate 10 per cent stake each of the final combined entity.

Managing Director of Bendigo Bank, Mike Hirst, welcomed the shareholder approval.

“We look forward to working with Cuscal in the payments space, a focus which will directly assist our goal to be Australia’s most customer-connected bank. The payment solutions that the combined entity will deliver will help us to be even more relevant to customers and their communities,” Mr Hirst said.

About SPS
Since 2006 SPS has achieved an enviable market position as one of the leading independent payment processors in Australia. Its end-to-end solutions include transaction switching, device driving, card management, merchant management, data analysis, back office reporting, settlement and support functions.