Westpac CEO: It's Too Soon to Panic About Bitcoin
The CEO of Westpac Group, Australia's second-largest bank, has claimed it is "too soon" to panic about bitcoin and blockchain technology. At a strategy briefing in Sydney yesterday, Brian Hartzer said the future of the technology - which has a number of "limitations" - is currently uncertain, the Sydney Morning Herald reports. He added: "I think it is a bit too soon to panic about it. It is potentially quite powerful from an efficiency point of view. It is one of the things we are keeping an eye on." In June, the bank went public with details of its current proof-of-concept with Ripple....
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Two of Australia's "big four banks," Westpac Banking Corporation and the Australia and New Zealand Bank Group (ANZ), are trialing Ripple payments for faster and lower-cost cross-border payments. Westpac, which is ahead of ANZ in its intention of integrating Ripple, said it is in the early stages of a proof-of-concept where staff members are testing the system by making small international payments to other countries. Speaking with the Australian Financial Review, Rachel Slade, general manager of global transactional services at Westpac, said that Westpac has been satisfied by the....
It has to be said, Australia is showing a very bullish trend where venture capital is concerned in 2016. The fintech industry is heating up in Australia as of late. Westpac is backing a second AU$50m startup fund for fintech startups in the country. The bank will do so in collaboration with Sydney-based VC firm Reinventure. The hunt for promising Australian fintech startups is in full swing, and it is positive to see Westpac being part of this initiative. It is not the first venture by Westpac in the fintech industry either. The financial institution had shown its support for the local....
Following the Commonwealth Bank of Australia's (CBA) move to partner with Ripple Labs in using blockchain technology for its offshore transactions, other banks in Australia joined the bandwagon. Westpac and Australia New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ) are also working to test payment technology offered by Ripple Labs. According to Westpac, it is in the early stages of a proof of concept using the Ripple network in which staff are making low-value international payments to two other countries. ANZ is still in the middle of constructive conversations with Ripple and is in the process of....
Two of Australia's 'big four' banks, Westpac Banking Corporation and the Australia and New Zealand Banking Group, are experimenting with peer-to-peer transfers on the Ripple protocol. The news, revealed by The Australian Financial Review, follows last month's announcement that the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) - another 'big four' rival - is trialling the tech for transfers between its subsidiaries. At the time, CBA's chief information officer David Whiteing described distributed protocols as
Reinventure Group, a venture capital firm backed by Westpac, the second-largest bank in Australia, has been revealed as one of bitcoin wallet and exchange service Coinbase's Series C backers. Coinbase announced in January that it had raised $75m in new funding, a round that drew support from Spanish megabank BBVA and Fortune 500 financial services group USAA, among others. The participation of Reinventure was disclosed in a 29th June blog post, in which Coinbase said that it planned to