National Australia Bank (NAB) is partnering with Pollinate to transform their merchant acquiring offering for small and medium sized businesses (SMEs) across Australia.

SMEs are of vital importance to the Australian economy, driving over half of the country's economic output, and employing two in every three Australian workers. One third of Australian SMEs bank with NAB, and supporting them has never been more important.  Central to this support is the ability for SMEs to access the digital tools and payment solutions historically only available to larger businesses.

NAB’s implementation of Pollinate’s global cloud-based platform will help their SME customers better manage and grow their businesses.  In Australia only 54% of small firms use digital invoicing and accounting relative to 78% of large businesses ¹.  The Pollinate platform brings these and other digital services to SMEs through a single platform. Working seamlessly with NABs existing merchant acquiring infrastructure, the Pollinate platform gives SMEs business insights, integrations with third-party applications (such as accountancy) and the ability to run digital loyalty programs. 

Andrew Irvine, NAB’s Group Executive for Business & Private Banking, said NAB was focused on delivering innovative products for small businesses to help them succeed. He added: “Real-time data that delivers greater insights into what customers want, when and how they want it, can be transformative to a small business. Leveraging Pollinate’s platform, NAB will be able to give businesses the information they need to make decisions about their daily sales at their fingertips.”

By working with Pollinate, NAB is the second bank to join a global network, dedicated to bringing the next generation of merchant services to businesses around the world. The platform was launched as Tyl by NatWest in the UK in September 2019.  Pollinate’s model is to work with one leading bank in each geography, and is in advanced discussions in South Africa, Canada and other regions. NAB also joins NatWest, Mastercard, EFM Asset Management and Motive Partners as an investor in Pollinate, bringing the total amount raised to £70m. 

Al Lukies CBE, Pollinate Founder and CEO, said: “Banks around the world have had a difficult decade, but they remain the only ones in the payment chain who can connect directly with both merchants and consumers. NAB is ideally placed to create a virtuous circle between the bank, its business customers and the communities they serve.  We are honoured to be their partner of choice in Australia.”

1       https://business.nab.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Supporting-Economic-Recovery-What-we-can-do-for-Small-Business-2.pdf.

2       The Australian partnership with NAB follows Pollinate’s global strategic partnership agreement with Mastercard, which was signed in August 2020.  This deepened Mastercard’s relationship with Pollinate to a formal collaboration to bring the latest technology and data insights to banks serving SME customers around the world. The agreement covers product development, business development and marketing efforts across Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas.