New digital bank Up announces partnership with Afterpay
The partnership will enable Up customers to see their upcoming Afterpay repayments within their mobile banking app.
The partnership will enable Up customers to see their upcoming Afterpay repayments within their mobile banking app.New digital bank Up which launched just yesterday has today announced it has partnered with Afterpay, with the strategic partnership to go live in November. The new bank Up is backed by Bendigo and Adelaide bank, and is cloud-hosted and run entirely within the app.
Up co-founder Dom Pym announced their partnership with Afterpay at its launch event held in Sydney on Wednesday afternoon. "Today I want to announce a unique partnership that we've put together with Afterpay. We've found a partner who looks out for around 10% of online retail spend in Australia, and about 25% of online fashion spend. We've been working with them to roll out a solution that can help people with their spending. We think the benefit of this (partnership) is we can encourage some responsible spending."
Up already enables users see their upcoming bills within the app and receive push notifications when they have a payment due, to ensure they have enough money in their account. The partnership with Afterpay, which allows consumers to make online purchases and pay in four equal installments rather than in one upfront cost, will work in a similar way. If you've made an online purchase with Afterpay, you'll be able to see within your Up banking app how many of the four repayments you've already made, and which ones are upcoming and on what date.
As well as having visibility over upcoming Afterpay repayments, users will be able to see rich data within their Up app on each Afterpay transaction they've made. For example if you've purchased a pair of shoes online, you'll be able to see not only the store name but also the brand of shoes you've purchased, the size and the shipping costs. This data will help consumers better understand their spending habits and easily track their spending, without wasting time trying to figure out what each transaction was for or having to login to the Afterpay app. Plus, being able to see upcoming repayments will help users plan for the future and budget more effectively.
"Being tech-led, the first thing is we want to expose all the transaction details. When someone buys something, we want them to know exactly what it was that they've bought. It's only using Up that you'll known in your activity feed immediately what you've bought and where you've bought it from. You can not only see what you've bought, but you can see how many remaining payments you have so that you can plan for the future," said Pym.
"It's better for Afterpay because they know they've got really qualified customers who can meet their repayments, and it's good for Up because we can expose those detilas to customers and help them with their financial literacy, and it's also better for the customer."
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