Commonwealth Bank-backed fintech Klarna’s Australian foray is starting to look like a disaster for the Swedish buy now pay later startup. Banking Day reports that just two years after its launch, an EY audit of Klarna Australia’s CY2021 performance reveals a net loss of $56 million, with revenue falling 71% on its first year of… Read more »
Sydney fintech Paytron has won the Xccelerate 2022 run by the Commonwealth Bank’s x15ventures, landing a $250,000 SAFE note. Paytron, a full-suite workflows and spend management platform, was chosen from four finalists focus on payments, including Cape, Persollo and YouPay, pitching to the investment committee last night. The deal with x15ventures gives the fintech access… Read more »
The Commonwealth Bank’s venture-scaling arm, x15ventures, has revamped its accelerator program, Xccelerate, and is now on the hunt for five early-stage fintech startups to back. While the three previous iterations of Xccelerate have seen x15ventures choose an winner ultimate winner to back – givvable and OwnHome in 2020, and Splashup last year – this time… Read more »
The Commonwealth Bank is expanding its children’s banking products with a new digital app as part of a wider digital strategy announced by CEO Matt Comyn. The range of initiatives the bank launched include a new low interest digital home loan at 2.14% for owner-occupiers. It’s also adding the CommSec share trading app to the… Read more »
The Commonwealth Bank has taken a 20% stake in Brisbane fintech startup Paypa Plane for an undisclosed sum. Founded in 2018 by Simone Joyce and Jonathan Grant, Paypa Plane is a digital payments provider, building a bank-grade platform where traditional scheduled payments and payment initiation via the New Payments Platform (NPP) and PayTo, which is… Read more »
The Commonwealth Bank (CBA) has backed US cryptocurrency exchange Gemini in a US$400 million (A$500m) capital raise. It was Gemini’s first outside financing, and values the business, founded in 2015 by twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, at US$7.1 billion. The round was led by Morgan Creek Digital with CBA taking a minority stake alongside 10T,… Read more »
x15ventures, the Commonwealth Bank’s venture scaling arm, has tipped an additional $700,000 into its joint venture fintech Payble. The startup is a subsidiary of ASX-listed Sydney fintech Identitii (ASX: ID8), which uses blockchain and tokenisation to connect banks and businesses with the data for payments, in a joint venture with x15. Payble co-founder and MD… Read more »
The Commonwealth Bank venture-scaling entity, x15ventures, has launched a new venture targeting Gen Z and Millennials with a brand and deal discovery shopping app that offers cashback rewards Cheddar uses artificial intelligence (AI) to help customers discover personalised brands, authentic content and deals, alongside a rewards program, serving up bite-sized content in the style of… Read more »
The Commonwealth Bank of Australia announced last week that it will allow its customers to buy and sell cryptocurrency through its app, in the first move of its kind by a major Australian bank. If Australia’s biggest bank is willing to offer unregulated products like crypto to their customers and take on board a high… Read more »
Australia’s biggest bank, the Commonwealth (CBA) has made a major play in artificial intelligence, investing $134 million (US$100m) in California AI market leader H2O.ai, for a minority stake. The bank is hoping the exclusive partnership with the Silicon Valley machine learning platform will help make Australia a leading force in AI. H2O is CBA’s exclusive… Read more »
The Commonwealth Bank is embracing cryptocurrencies, and will allow CommBank app customers to buy, sell and hold crypto assets. In the a game-changing move for the sector by the country’s biggest bank will see it partnered with crypto exchange Gemini – founded by the Winklevoss twins of Facebook fame – and blockchain analysis firm, Chainalysis.… Read more »
Carbon footprint tracking startup CoGo has partnered with the Commonwealth Bank (CBA) to help CBA customers track the carbon footprint generated by their spending. The feature will initially involve a trial of CommBank app customers able to view their carbon footprint and offset the previous month’s transactions by buying carbon credits. Following testing and further… Read more »
The Commonwealth Bank’s venture-scaling arm, x15ventures, has added a new proptech startup to its investment portfolio, taking a stake in the Antler-backed property management company :Different. Co-founded in 2017 by Silicon Valley entrepreneurs Mina Radhakrishnan and her husband Ruwin Perera, whose CVs include Google, Uber and other tech giants, :Different digitises a large slab of property… Read more »
The Commonwealth Bank’s new buy now pay later product, StepPay, went live today with CBA no doubt hoping plenty of its 4 million customers will give the app a crack. More than 86,000 CBA customers had pre-registered for it after the idea was announced in April. This is CBA’s first outright BNPL, and sits alongside… Read more »
Splashup, an ecommerce startup hoping to simplify online shopping and the comparison experience to find what customers want, has won the pitch competition by the Commonwealth Bank’s venture-scaling entity, x15ventures. Splashup co-founders Nathalie Rafeh and Vivek Bharadwaj will receive a $150,000 SAFE note as the winners of the Xccelerate21 program. Now in its third run,… Read more »
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