CBA teams up with Square Peg and Zetta Venture Partners

By Edil Corneille

Commonwealth Bank (CBA) announced today its commitment of US$10 million to the most recent funds for Square Peg and Zetta Venture Partners. The appointment of these strategic partners will support the sourcing, scaling, and financing of local FinTechs, as well as the development of emerging artificial intelligence businesses. The partnerships coincide with the announcement of X15 Ventures’ fourth new venture, Backr.

Commonwealth Bank CEO, Matt Comyn enthused, “…We’re also delighted to welcome Square Peg and Zetta as strategic partners and look forward to working with them to bring new solutions to our customers, harnessing the latest technologies, artificial intelligence, and machine learning models.”

CBA mentioned that Square Peg is one of Australia’s leading venture capital funds, having backed a range of successful Australian ventures. They will partner with X15 on the sourcing, scaling, and financing of Australian FinTechs. Zetta Venture Partners is an American-based venture capital fund that invests purely in artificial intelligence companies.

CBA has also provided an update on its partnership with Klarna, a digital payments provider. Since its launch in January 2020, the Klarna App has been downloaded by over 270,000 Australians and more than 80 merchants are now live on the platform. Global revenue for Klarna has grown to $750 million for the first half of 2020, and Klarna has seen volume growth of up to 50 percent year on year during the coronavirus (COVID-19) period.

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CBA has revealed its latest digital banking numbers where, more than 6.1 million customers are now using the CommBank App, up 500,000 from 5.6 million in FY19. Over $1.2 billion is now transacted through the App every day, while daily logins have surpassed 6.3 million. Combined with the Group’s online banking platform, NetBank, digital daily logins rose to a record 10.2 million at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.