Woolworths Group has launched a new stand-alone payments business dubbed Wpay, which will offer end-to-end payment solutions to merchants outside of the group.
Wpay will offer Australian merchants a payments and commerce platform, which includes integrated in-store and digital payments, supporting traditional card payments, and support for digital wallets.
It also comes with a range of payment services such as transaction processing at scale, rapid funds settlement and simple reconciliation, fraud management, detailed reporting, and merchant analytics. Additionally, it will also have gift card programme management, including sale, redemption, and distribution partnerships.
"As Australia and New Zealand's largest retailer, we've been investing in leading-edge payment capabilities to service our retail businesses for many years," said Woolworths Group CEO Brad Banducci. "We believe there is value in extending the benefits of the investments we've made in our payments platform to other merchants who may not have the scale to build it themselves."
Woolworths claims to be the fifth-largest processor of card payments in Australia, with an annual value of over $50 billion across more than 1.3 billion transactions.
Wpay will become the payments provider to BWS, a retail chain of liquor stores, and Dan Murphy's, a liquor supermarket chain, which are both owned by the Endeavour Group, which is scheduled to split from the Woolworths Group as part of a proposed separation.
"It's an exciting time in the world of payments with new technology driving better experiences for consumers," said Paul Monnington, Woolworths general manager of fintech, who has been appointed managing director of Wpay.
"Wpay enters the sector with a strong Australian pedigree serving high volume retail brands across food and grocery, fuel, liquor, hospitality and e-commerce,"
