Ellerston Capital has invested $10 million and joined Andrew Forrest’s private investment company Tattarang on the register of Azupay, a start-up which wants to make it easier for government and businesses to collect payments from customers.
Ellerston Capital has invested $10 million and joined Andrew Forrest’s private investment company Tattarang on the register of Azupay, a start-up which wants to make it easier for government and businesses to collect payments from customers.
Ellerston was an early backer of buy now, pay later juggernaut Afterpay and Tyro Payments, which supplies payments terminals to merchants. Azupay wants to work with major banks to ensure corporates enjoy the big efficiency gains of real-time payments.
Azupay CEO John Murphy: “Banks’ capacity to build new services for clients in corporate and institutional space is problematic.”
This will require patience. Banks’ competing investment priorities, which prompt them to under-invest in commercial banking compared to retail banking, and their reliance on the antiquated ‘direct entry’ debit system, mean it will be a while before banks allow the real-time payment system to reach its full potential.
The real-time alternative to the bank-owned BPay allows money to be collected without reconciliation headaches. Azupay has also developed technology that will allow merchants, or billers like telcos and energy utilities, to extract funds directly from customer bank accounts using the NPP [new payments platform] when new functionality known as PayTo is switched on in June next year.
“It is a race for the four majors to win the hearts and minds of their corporate and institutional clients around innovation as business customers put pressure on banks, by asking what are they doing to improve account receivables, payables and reconciliation issues,” says John Murphy, Azupay CEO, who spent the last decade of his banking career in leading payment-roles at National Australia Bank, before he joined the federal government to lead Centrelink’s digital payment modernisation.
While the banks have been mandated to ensure retail customers can control direct debits in banking apps when PayTo goes live, Azupay senses underinvestment on the merchant side, an oversight which also saw banks miss the buy now, pay later opportunity.
So Azupay is focusing on making sure companies understand what real-time payments can do for them, including telling them as soon as a payment has been made and the funds are cleared. Its key customer is Services NSW and it is scouting other state governments and commercial property firms keen to reduce paper-pushing in back offices.
“When we met the guys from Azupay, it was obvious the NPP will be disruptive technology to many incumbents. Azupay’s B2B approach will enable businesses to access the NPP, and offer a unique payments proposition,” said Justin Diddams, senior investment analyst at Ellerston Capital. “Like in other markets around the world, real-time payments are here to stay. In Australia, the RBA has mandated it, and the Azupay founders have been building technology in the payments sector for over a decade.”
At NAB, Mr Murphy led engagement with the RBA scoping the NPP, while Azupay co-founder Andrew Seymour was the lead architect for Cuscal’s implementation of the NPP.
John Hartman, Tattarang’s chief investment officer, has been replaced on the Azupay board by Bruce Mansfield, an adviser to the Minderoo Foundation who was CEO of eftpos for seven years to 2017 and is the RBA’s appointee on the Australian Payments Council.
Part of the pitch to big billers is that taking a direct payment from a customer bank account is cheaper than accepting a credit card, but the real benefits come from better management of data compared to BPay.
Azupay’s technology eliminates duplicate and misdirected payments, allowing corporates to reduce reconciliation and remediation costs if bills are underpaid or overpaid.
It uses a PayID rather than a reference number, which can tell a payer immediately if the payment is not correct to ensure it is done again. It can use QR codes and is integrated with Xero accounting software.
“The NPP has taken many years to get up, and billions of investment from the RBA and banks, and it is important for government and the banks to focus some significant efforts on advocating for the NPP, and building out services that can use the real-time capability,” Mr Murphy said. “There is a lot more that needs to be done around that space.”
For now, it is start-ups pushing the boundaries.
“Organisations like Azupay, GoCardless, Split Payments and Paypa Plane will play an important role on the send side, in addition to participating banks,” said Adrian Lovney, CEO of NPP Australia.
“We expect to see increasing interest from those looking at participating in CDR [consumer data right] data sharing who also want to be able to use PayTo, and this reinforces our thinking that PayTo will support lots of different use cases by a wide range of stakeholders.”
Another opportunity will come when the direct entry system eventually switches off. RBA governor Philip Lowe warned the banks in December 2019 that eventually the core payment system will need to be shut down given “we have got a much better system out there [the NPP], which is faster, more efficient and more secure.”
Mr Murphy said the four major banks’ technology development plans are still caught up with risk and compliance, meaning the “capacity to build out new services for clients in corporate and institutional space is problematic. But at the same time, corporate and instos are looking to banks for ways to reduce costs.”
