CBA and Barclays launch money transfer partnership
(6 September 2016 – Australia) Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) and Barclays have announced a joint payments system that allows customers to transfer money immediately between the UK Britain and Australia using only a mobile number.
The two banks do not compete directly against each other in their domestic markets. By combining their respective apps, CBA and Barclays hope a potential pool of 13 million customers will benefit from a collaboration that results in simplified cross-border transfers.
CBA chief executive Ian Narev said "It's about understanding the broad nature of where the threats may be.
"What we really need to do is build the culture and conditions where the business can respond more rapidly to those threats."
The Australian bank, which recently opened a London "innovation lab" in addition to those in Hong Kong and Sydney remain dedicated to digital innovation. CBA's head of institutional and banking and markets, Kelly Bayer Rosmarin, said the ability to make cross-border, mobile-to-mobile payments with no bank details was "the beginning of something".
"Over time we are going to try to make this even broader so that it includes customers that don't even bank with our banks in their markets and obviously we can go into other markets," she said.
Pingit, Barclays’ money sending service, has 3 million customers and is available to anyone that has the app – not just Barclays customers.
Bayer Rosmarin said the partnership was not a response to competitive threats from fintech firms.
"I think we have been a consistent leader in payments in Australia," she was quoted as saying.
"We were the first in the world to let people pay a Facebook friend. We were certainly the first in Australia to let people pay a mobile phone number or an email address. We were the first out there with contactless."
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