It's all about the money, money, money. Not the BNPL battle.
CBA is the biggest of the Big 4 banks, with around 16 million customers and big plans to take on buy now, pay later giants like Afterpay and Zip.
They've launched a new BNPL product called StepPay - even though they already have Klarna - which works like a credit card that you can use in stores.
Yes, CBA wants its own BNPL product. But this is bigger than that. It's about card interchange, which is a little dry - but makes these banks a LOTTA cash.
Card interchange is a fee paid by a merchant’s bank - called the acquirer - to a cardholder’s bank - called the issuer - because of the benefit that the merchant gets when they accept electronic payments.
And not all interchange fees are created equal. Credit cards actually earn more in fees than say debit cards or eftpos cards.
CBA's StepPay card will earn 10 times what its debit cards earn - and 40 times more than its eftpos cards. Not just a pretty face, hey?
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