BRW's most innovative listing recognises Bendigo's ingenuity

Bendigo and Adelaide Bank has been recognised with inclusion in the 2014 BRW Innovative Company list.

Bank subsidiary Community Telco Australia was cited for its unique redy mobile payment system that enables users to donate loyalty credits to community causes.

The bank has a worldwide patent pending on redy, developed by CTA and the bank and already in use in a growing number of Australian communities.

The BRW assessment of CTA included a review of recent innovations, such as redy, but also a survey of staff to assess the 'innovative culture' of the business.

Bendigo's managing director Mike Hirst welcomed BRW's recognition of the bank's quest to develop innovative solutions for the convergence of banking, telephony and payments.

"Our bank has a long history of innovation - Australia's first Visa card and mortgage offset account, and of course our unique Community Bank^® model - but while we are perhaps not generally thought of as a technology company, we are now engaged in cutting-edge payments innovation.

"To achieve our goal to be Australia's most customer-connected bank, we need to deliver innovations that make us even more relevant to customers and their communities and redy is a great example of that.

"It offers great functionality as a mobile payment device, but it's bigger than that: It provides businesses with a fantastic loyalty program to attract and retain customers and develop their local community.

"Our modelling suggests that communities that strongly adopt redy can generate really significant income streams just by capturing transactions that already occur in their suburb or town.

"redy has the potential to transform the way in which communities generate funding for clubs and projects."

CTA chief executive David Joss said his company, launched in 2003 as a telecommunications aggregator remains active in that field but undertakes innovation with Bendigo centred on the bank's desire to add value to customers beyond banking.

"Ours is not innovation for innovation's sake, we look beyond the functionality of our devices to see how we can build community capacity and prosperity, which is at the heart of Bendigo's strategy."

Releases include Bendigo's MicrOpay mobile eftpos device and CTA's 'Cube' mobile device management system.

Mr Hirst said the bank continued to roll out technology updates to its 1.5 million Bendigo Bank customers. "We recently launched our new mobile banking app which, again, was built based on direct input from our customers.

"Updates to functionality on both the app and the website will be rolled out in the next couple of months as we continue to better connect with our customers and prospects."