Westpac Signs on Inaugural BaaS Client Afterpay
(21 October 2020 – Australia) Westpac has announced buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) share market darling Afterpay as its first partner for the group’s ‘Bank-as-a-Service’ (BaaS) offering.
The announcement comes just one year after signalling the development of a new digital banking platform leveraging cloud-native technology from British based 10x Future Technologies. The new platform allows the bank’s partners to offer banking products and services, such as transaction accounts, to customers in a ‘white labelled’ fashion. For example Afterpay will manage the look and feel of the customer experience while Westpac will hold the direct banking relationship with end customers as the licensed Authorised deposit-taking institution (ADI).
Standard Chartered also recently launched its own BaaS nexus solution earlier this year targeting customers in Asia, the Middle East and Africa.
“The bank built the BaaS platform in response to two key trends, the rise of new cloud-based core banking systems that offer more flexibility to meet customer needs and a shift in how financial products are being distributed. In particular, we're seeing some of these large digital platforms who have an opportunity to embed financial services within their ecosystem” stated Westpac General Manager, Corporate and Business Development, Macgregor Duncan.
“Together with the power of our retail platform, the latest banking technology from 10X, and the support of Westpac, we will begin by offering cashflow management in a simple way. Afterpay is in a unique position to extend and deepen the relationship with our customers and help them to manage their money more seamlessly through savings and budgeting tools. For Afterpay, this is clearly just the beginning as we explore this opportunity globally” said Afterpay CEO Anthony Eisen commenting on the announcement.
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