When we look at the news back to 2017 which Westpac first...

When we look at the news back to 2017 which Westpac first invested in Zip, they had a big plan, but during those 3 years what support or strategic value that Westpac has provided to Zip to scale up as it is today?

Westpac said "We like deals where our incentives are aligned with management and our contributions to a company’s growth are rewarded" but when you look back , how many times you have seen the announcement of Lapsing of Unlisted Performance Rights.

IMO this was going to happen soon rather than later and I'm glad Westpac has now jumped out the ship to deal with their own issue. It will be interesting to see on next Monday, which institution is willing to share the next journey with Zip.



Is this more of an investment or a strategic partnership?

Well, it’s both. Westpac isn’t running a private equity shop. We’re not focused on financial engineering. We’re focused on partnering to add strategic value for both Westpac and our portfolio companies. If we can do this well, financial returns will take care of themselves.

With Zip, we’re partnering for a range of reasons. We’re looking to offer Westpac customers more choice in the changing payments landscape. We want to co-create new products and services.And of course it’s a way for Westpac to reach the next generation of customers and keep pace with new technology and changing consumer behaviour.

For Zip the benefit is many-fold. For instance, we’ll look to integrate Zip into our merchant payment terminals and give Zip instant scale in-store.

As part of the deal Westpac was given performance options in Zip. Why was the deal structured in this way?

We like deals where our incentives are aligned with management and our contributions to a company’s growth are rewarded. Zip was happy to grant us performance options tied to future revenue hurdles. We’ll now do our best to meet these revenue hurdles and, if we do, everyone will win.

What can 200 year old Westpac learn from a 4 year old company like Zip?

Westpac is great at many things, but it can’t be great at all things. That’s not a criticism: it’s true of all people and all organisations.

Westpac is great at managing a balance sheet of three quarters of a trillion dollars. That’s a big number and a big responsibility. Australians trust Westpac to keep their money secure and provide financial services to help people through their lives.

But it’s hard for an organisation with that kind of responsibility to also be disruptive. It’s hard to build quickly, take risks and experiment. That’s just a fact.

By investing and partnering with innovators like Zip, we can learn a lot. We’ve been impressed with Zip’s proprietary data analytics platform, for instance. We’re also impressed with Zip’s vision and willingness to refashion our industry. It’s exciting.

Similarly Westpac can add a lot of value to Zip: distribution, obviously, but also the experience of how to run an organisation at scale.