(25 January 2006 – Australia) Bendigo Bank and listed Australian electronic payments systems business, Customers Limited, have embarked on a joint venture initiative to build an independent payment processing business.The companies said the initial development and implementation phase would be completed within 12 months and would involve the processing and management of all Bendigo and Customers’ ATM and EFTPOS traffic.
The project will be undertaken through a proposed joint venture company, Strategic Payments Services Pty Limited (SPS) and the plan is that MasterCard will provide wholesale switching services.
Bendigo managing director Rob Hunt said customers of both organizations, and of SPS ultimately, would benefit from increased competition and innovation in the marketplace.
“Bendigo has carefully examined numerous options first to achieve a best practice in payments processing and services solution and secondly a commercial framework that will create value for the joint venture partners and respective shareholders,” he said.
“By combining our business volumes we will immediately have a viable critical mass,” Hunt said.
“When applied via the Joint Venture these volumes are expected to deliver greater efficiencies and therefore solid savings to both Bendigo and Customers, which will ultimately flow through to competitive customer pricing,” Hunt said.