Commonwealth Bank amps up e-commerce drive with new platform

Commonwealth Bank is ready to take the fight up to global retail fintechs like PayPal, Square and Stripe with the launch of a platform that unlocks and puts a range of payment methods for merchants under one umbrella.

The banking heavyweight has partnered with “payments orchestration” company Paydock to roll out PowerBoard, a service that lets the bank’s online retailer clients monitor transactions in real-time and switch on a range of payment options for their customers.

Those options include card payments, digital wallets, buy now, pay later (BNPL) providers and eftpos payments.

The launch of the service allows CBA to impose itself into the domain of global players like Stripe and Square, which have been the go-to options for retailers looking to integrate multiple payment methods into one e-commerce site.

Business banking is a key battleground for Australia’s banks, and has also been firmly on the radar of cashed-up technology firms that are all trying to pinch merchant customers off established banks.

Commonwealth Bank’s group executive of business banking, Mike Vacy-Lyle, said on the bank would be targeting established e-commerce players with the offer.

“It’s probably not [for] your traditional SME,” he said, noting that the bank did intend to scale the offer down to smaller players over time. “We think the big opportunity now is probably in that mid [size] corporate space.”

The bank says the platform will help businesses “future-proof” their infrastructure by letting them turn payment options on and off easily as they need them.

But PowerBoard also gives Commonwealth Bank oversight of data that it previously hasn’t been able to see clearly once its clients customers use third-party payment options like buy now, pay later services, making it hard for them to provide insights to their clients about those payment methods.