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CBA-owned fintech unveils small-business app

by Malavika Santhebennur10 minute read
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A fintech firm fully owned by the Commonwealth Bank has released a mobile app for small businesses, which collates data and provides insights around cash flow and performance.

X15 Ventures (X15), a wholly owned subsidiary of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), was launched this week to deliver new digital solutions to benefit Australian consumers and businesses.

The Vonto mobile app collates and sifts through a business’ data from platforms – such as Xero, Google Analytics, Shopify, Facebook and Vend – to provide 10 key insights and recommended actions on a daily basis. This could include insights around cash flow outlook, website traffic, social media engagement and product performance.

According to Vonto managing director Elliot Cousins, the app was developed to streamline processes and help save time, given that approximately 80 per cent of small businesses are using up to six separate business apps to operate their businesses.

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Small-business owners are time-poor – for most business owners, there aren’t enough hours in the day to double click on what their business data is telling them, let alone decipher this information and know what to do with it. That’s where Vonto comes in,” he said.

“We decided to launch with a selective number of integrations and are looking to our users to tell us what integrations they want in future releases,” he said.  

The app has also been made available to small businesses that are not CBA customers. 

The launch of the Vonto app follows CBA’s recent move to overhaul its SME lending services by committing to hire more than 120 new small-business bankers, who will be placed in phone-based business centres, as well as branches in key areas.

Additionally, the bank rolled out business lending platform BizExpress, which it said would provide same-day lending decisions and quicker access to unsecured loans between $250,000 to $1 million.

According to CBA general manager, innovation and ventures, Toby Norton-Smith – the managing director of X15 Ventures – the CBA subsidiary intends to launch at least 25 ventures over the next five years, including Vonto.

It has already launched another app, Home-In, a virtual home buying “concierge” that aims to simplify the process of buying a home by leveraging a platform of accredited service providers like conveyancers and utility companies and providing access to tailored checklists and a dedicated home buying assistant.

[Related: CBA slips up in broker space as peers recover]

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Malavika Santhebennur

AUTHOR

Malavika Santhebennur is a content specialist at Momentum Media, focusing on mortgages and finance writing.

Before joining Momentum Media in 2019, Malavika held roles with Money Management and Benchmark Media, where she was writing about financial services.