The payments landscape is changing and banks need to be more nimble and agile to meet the needs of future customers, according to Rachel Slade, General Manager, Global Transaction Services at Westpac.
The payments landscape is changing and banks need to be more nimble and agile to meet the needs of future customers, according to Rachel Slade, General Manager, Global Transaction Services at Westpac.
Speaking at FST Media’s 10th annual Technology & Innovation – The Future of Banking and Financial Services conference in Sydney this afternoon, Slade shed light on how Westpac has shaped its global transactional banking strategy to “harness digitisation” and think and act like a “200-year-old startup”.
“Earlier this year, our chief executive officer, Brian Hartzer, added the word ‘service’ to our vision and it really shapes the way we think about technology and innovation,” Slade said.
“True innovation revolves around solving customer problems, focussed on solving fragmentation and friction.”
The comments come on the back of an announcement by Westpac CEO Brian Hartzer last week that the bank will look into adopting blockchain technology to reduce the bank’s payments infrastructure costs, having officially joined CBA and ANZ in trialling Ripple’s payments technology earlier this year.
According to Slade, banks find themselves at a significant “inflexion point” as over the last three years, Westpac’s digital transactions have gone up by 40 per cent, branch transactions are down by 15 per cent and phone transactions are down by 30 per cent – findings which have augmented the bank’s increasing push to digital.
Slade added that with the launch of the New Payments Platform in 2017, banks will need to do more to keep pace with the changing expectations of customers.
“As someone that is very passionate about customers and innovation, I agree that for a long time payments have been boring,” said Slade.
“Our customers are starting to expect what they see in travel, media and retail in banking … the New Payments Platform is not only going to change banking, it is going to change businesses and the way they operate.”
With Melbourne-based peer-to-peer lender MoneyPlace launching last week and the increasing emergence of agile fintech competitors, Slade said that banks need to be open to embracing disruption and collaborating with fintech startups to achieve “true innovation”.
“The places where disruptors succeed are [in] pain points and points of friction … We have to forge deep partnerships with them,” she said.
“We [also] have to be our own disruptors, reimagining and reinventing ourselves to suit our customers’ needs.”
