Financial Services News

Michael Lawrence, thc chief executive of Australia’s peak mutual banking body, the Customer Owned Banking Association (COBA), has taken a global leadership role in the sector, having been voted in as chair of the World Council of Credit Unions (WOCCU)....

Australian lender Plenti has become the first NAB business customer to integrate its ‘Pay by Bank’ capability – which leverages Australian Payments Plus’ (AP+’s) PayTo function – into its online lending platform. Pay by Bank, co-developed by fintech Banked and...

Leading Australian wealth management firm Colonial First State (CFS) has expanded its rollout of Microsoft’s Copilot to 75 per cent of its workforce, representing more than 1,000 staff across its Australian operations. After an initial test-case rollout of 300 Microsoft...

J.P. Morgan Payments, the payments services and paytech development arm of US banking giant J.P. Morgan Chase, has been announced as the newest member of the AP+ network. Through its membership, the US payments giant will gain access to Australia’s...

The Australian consumer advocacy watchdog’s National Anti-Scam Centre has sounded a warning to consumers and small businesses of a potential deluge of “unsolicited calls, emails or messages” promising to help ‘fix’ systems affected by the CrowdStrike outage. Scammers have been...

The Financial Services Union (FSU) has urged the Federal Government to take a more active role in monitoring the big four banks’ and other major FSIs’ use of artificial intelligence (AI), calling for new legislation to protect workers against potential...

Westpac will extend the rollout of its Dynamic Virtual Cards (DVCs) to its institutional, corporate and government customers, the bank has announced. The new corporate DVCs can be used – including for staff or even business clients on a temporary...

Dosh, a New Zealand-based developer of a youth-oriented money management and payments app, has announced its intention to become the country’s first locally owned digital-only registered bank. The fintech, known for its full-suite financial management app boasting instant payments, personal...

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) technologies are set to drive “unprecedented innovation and operational efficiency” within the financial services sector, says data and analytics firm GlobalData, with wealth firms set to undergo significant transformation. With wealth firms already actively prototyping GenAI...

New Zealand state-owned banking group, Kiwibank, has pleaded guilty in court today to breaches of the Fair Trading Act after it was found to have misled customers over promised home loan and overdraft fees. Kiwibank admitted the mischarges – which...

Revolut, the global neobank and forex app, has released a first-of-its-kind in-app identity verification system designed to prevent thieves from accessing funds set aside in customers’ savings accounts. Dubbed ‘Wealth Protection’, the biometric face-scanning feature promises an added layer of...

Despite a surge in the number of Australian businesses falling victim to cybercrime, with the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ASCS) reporting a 23 per cent increase in incidents last financial year, many are still failing to implement basic cyber hygiene...

The proliferation of malware-as-a-service tools online is accelerating the loss of payment card details to criminals, with an April 2024 snapshot survey revealing that more than 600,000 payment cards were compromised worldwide, with their details later sold on the dark...

The Commonwealth Bank of Australia’s (CBA’s) venture-scaling arm, x15ventures, has put out the call to startups with data and artificial intelligence (AI) expertise to join its annual incubation program, Xccelerate. This year’s program, x15’s sixth since its launch back in...

Three out of four Australians and New Zealanders consider the quality of their banking app a significant determinant in whether to stay or switch banking providers, a new consumer survey has revealed. Findings from the newly released report, Byte-Sized Banking:...