APT essentially has a license from ASIC to offer financial products. They don't have a banking license from APRA which would allow APT to take and hold customer deposits directly (Westpac is holding the deposits for them). Because it is so vital for depositors to have confidence in the banking sector and for the general public to have their deposits protected, authorized deposit taking institutions (ADIs) are heavily regulated. If you want more information on how heavily they are regulated you can look at the prudential standards, starting with CPS 220 Risk Management, APS 110 Capital adequacy, APS 210 Liquidity and there are a gazillian others and always growing including culture, a new proposed standard on climate change financial risk, data risk, AML/CTF etc. You name it, they have it. Hence it's unlikely that APT would want to go down this path when they can offer their core product without a banking license and then have other verticals such as home loans that they can offer through white label partnerships. Klara is the only BNPL that is a bank but unless I'm mistaken Klarna started out as a bank and moved into BNPL, not the other way around. I think it's unlikely existing BNPL will want to go into banking. All in my opinion of course.
APT Price at posting:
$106.62 Sentiment: None Disclosure: Held
