Customer expectations in banking have shifted considerably in Australia over the past few years. As of late, the trend has been the increased preference to do everything from an app. Banks, for their part, have also been favoring the use of their app as an authenticated channel and entry point into a broader range of systems and services.
According to the Australian Banking Association (ABA)’s report, Bank On It: Customer Trends 2023, “98.9% of all bank transactions are digital and customers report the highest satisfaction using this channel.”
In addition, “Australians are now among the world’s top users of cashless payments, exceeding the United Kingdom, the United States, France and Germany.”
Speed Bumps in Digital Adaptation
Despite the evident demand in fintech, however, adoption of digital banking solutions have hit a few snags in Australia.
According to Global Banking Benchmark Study 2022 by Publicis Sapient, “More than half of Australian banks (58%) are yet to make headway with executing their digital transformation plans, after the pandemic sped up remote operations and digital customer interactions.”
More recently, during The Australian Financial Review Editors Forum, major banks had indicated that they want to slow down the speed of some banking activity, including online payments, to ensure customers’ safety from rising criminal activity targeting the nation’s savers.
Four bosses of the major bank’s retail divisions said “they are considering ways to add more ‘grit’ into the payments system to ensure money gets to the right place, amid a dramatic spike in cybercrime and scamming costing more than AUS$3 billion a year.”
In addition, in a report for National Seniors, Chief Operating Officer Chris Grice has shared that “some older Australians worry that it will soon be impossible to access cash – or that it will be available only through third-party ATMs that charge transaction fees.”
He also pointed out how digital transactions carry risks – as demonstrated by a recent day-long outage of online systems that left many bank customers unable to access their funds.
Filling the Gap in the Market
With demand in digital banking showing no signs of slowing down in Australia, opportunities continue to present themselves for fintech companies to take part in the growing domestic digital banking market.
For one, while the digitalization of banking in the country has been substantial, it has yet to fully address how frequent remittances are made out of the country. According to the World Bank, Australia sent a total of over AU$3.8 billion in outward remittances in 2021, which dwarfed the AU$922 million worth of remittances it received in the same year.
Unfortunately, research by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) also found that in many situations, the country’s “big four banks” were among the most expensive when it comes to costs related to sending money overseas. The research also determined that Australians could save as much as US$500 on a US$7,000 transaction if they used other services.
It is evident that people in Australia make many transactions going outside of the country, and they will continue to need fintech platforms that not only make these easy and instantaneous transactions, but also be of the lowest cost possible.
Established with an aim to to unlock a borderless financial system for everyone where money can flow freely, Black Banx one fintech looking to make easy international transactions a reality in Australia in other countries.
Established in 2014 by German billionaire Michael Gastauer, the Toronto-based digital global banking platform offers private and business accounts that can transact in 28 FIAT currencies and 2 crypto currencies.
Since its launch to the public in 2015, Black Banx has been available for use in 180 countries. By being global in scope right from the start, the company has since grown its customers on a yearly basis.
In the first half of 2023 alone, the company has been able to onboard over six million new private customers and as many as half a million new business customers globally. Averaging 1.3 million new customers per month in 2023 so far, Black Banx is projected to have well over 30 million customers before year’s end.
Along with its growth has been the company’s commitment to expand its services in scale. For instance, in 2016 the company began offering crypto currency as a deposit method. By 2018, it launched a fully fledged crypto currency trading with BTC and ETH as crypto currency.
Its unique cryptocurrency proposition offers clients autonomy by connecting to a fully fledged banking platform with the features of a crypto exchange, which enables them to use crypto balances to pay third parties directly.
So whether in traditional currency or in digital, customers in Australia can count on Black Banx to meet their international transaction needs. On top of easing global banking challenges, Black Banx also serves as a means for Australian business to expand internationally, as they can conveniently pay suppliers and/or employees they have partnered with overseas, and readily accept payments to potential customers that are in other countries.
