02 October 2024 6:45AMIan Rogers
No surprises. Another neobank bites the dust, this time, International Bank of Australia, which was weeks away from the deadline to progress to a full licence.
APRA yesterday said it agreed to requests from International Bank of Australia to revoke its licence to operate as a restricted authorised deposit-taking institution and IBOA Group Holdings to revoke its licence to operate as a non-operating holding company.
APRA granted International Bank of Australia and IBOA Holdings licences to operate as a restricted ADI and a NOHC respectively under the Banking Act 1959 in November 2022.
APRA said: “At the time of revocation, International Bank of Australia had not launched any products and had no customers and zero deposits.
“International Bank of Australia’s decision to request a revocation of its restricted ADI licence does not prejudice any future application it may make for an ADI or restricted ADI licence.”
Fully-funded, at first, by ASX listed Novatti, the late 2022 launch of IBOA was a bravado play by the payments fintech.
Like almost all neobanks in Australia, IBOA struggled to raise capital and apparently never got as far as testing products.
Following a change in CEO, and strategy, at Novatti early last year, the firm’s board lost interest in the neobank.
Finally, in late July, Novatti announced it would offload IBOA to investment bank Eurus Capital and several of its clients.
It is the new shareholders that have figured out they needed to pull the pin, with zero prospects of proceeding to a full licence over the next few weeks.
Other neobanks to return their licences were Xinja Bank, Volt Bank and Islamic Bank Australia (also a RADI).
