CUA agrees to terms with Cuscal as its wholesale payments provider.
Cuscal's new payment capabilities to power CUA's retail banking services
Cairns, 25 October 2011: Cuscal is pleased to announce that Credit Union Australia (CUA) has recommitted to Cuscal as its primary provider of wholesale transactional payments products.
The announcement was made at the 2011 Abacus/AM Institute Convention in Cairns, where Cuscal's new 'Ready and Live' capabilities are currently on operational display.
Cuscal's services to CUA will be powered by a new payments technology infrastructure, which has the capacity to manage emerging new innovations such as mobile and real-time payments. Cuscal has invested significantly to build the new capabilities, which are now operational in a production environment.
"After several months of assessing our payment supply requirements and completing a thorough evaluation and due diligence process, we have the confidence that Cuscal is the right partner to help us deliver highly competitive banking products and services to our customers," said Andrew Hadley, Group General Manager Marketing and Strategy, CUA.
"Payment services are evolving rapidly, particularly in areas like online and mobile banking. We need to ensure our infrastructure offers us the capacity and sophistication to innovate to meet our customers' ever changing needs. Cuscal's new capabilities and supporting business model satisfies our requirements," he said.
The agreement spans EFT processing across CUA's cards portfolio; ATM and batch (direct entry, BPay and chequing) transaction processing; net settlement; and the provision of access to the Australian payments system via Cuscal's regulatory representation and industry participation.
CUA has also agreed to terms for Cuscal's Vigil intelligent fraud protection, a world leading fraud management system from Cuscal that has one of the highest rates of fraud detection in the industry. Vigil is a 24/7 fraud bureau service, which combines technology and human intervention to protect cardholders from potential fraud "around the clock" including outside of business hours.
Craig Kennedy, managing director of Cuscal, said: "Cuscal has a long history of servicing Australia's mutual sector and other independent financial institutions. We have recently invested to build a modern and scalable payments infrastructure to continue to support our customers to compete effectively, in an environment of rapid regulatory and market change."
"CUA is our largest customer and we are delighted to be continuing our relationship with them into the long term. They are a leading example of the critical role that challenger financial institutions play by increasing competition and choice in Australia's banking environment," he said.
CUA is the latest organisation to commit to Cuscal under the terms of new contractual arrangements, which come into effect from January 2013.
About Cuscal
Cuscal is a leading business-to-business provider of wholesale banking and transactional banking services in Australia. Servicing more than 110 specialist retail financial institutions, including the majority of Australia's credit unions, Cuscal processes more than 100 million electronic banking transactions each year and manages the assets of a customer base with a collective balance sheet of more than $30 billion. For further information on Cuscal, please visit www.cuscal.com.au.
About CUA
As Australia's largest customer-owned financial institution, CUA provides banking services to more than 400,000 Australians across the country and is emerging as a competitive force in Australian banking. CUA is 100% owned by its customers, not shareholders, with profits reinvested back in to the business in the form of more competitive products, better interest rates and lower fees.
For more information, please visit: www.cua.com.au.
To arrange an interview or for further information, please contact:
Loyce Cox-Paton / Caroline Hendra
Cuscal Limited
T: 02 8299 9114 / 02 8299 9267
lcoxpaton@cuscal.com.au / chendra@cuscal.com.au
Catherine Harris
Mobile: 0439 746 405
Email: catherine.harris@cua.com.au
