Woolworths Group has announced that Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s (HPE) GreenLake cloud platform is being used to underpin its new standalone Wpay payments business.
Using Greenlake, according to Woolworths, has enabled the company to shift from its current data centre environment to an end-to-end-as-a-service cloud solution that enables greater capacity and business continuity. Under the partnership, Woolworths also has access to HPE’s cloud portfolio including Aruba, Nonstop, Primera, Synergy, and Pointnext Services.
Partnering with HPE on Wpay builds on Woolworth Group’s existing relationship with the tech giant that has been ongoing since 2007. The retail group already uses HPE’s infrastructure and managed services to support its supermarkets and Big W department stores.
“As Australia and New Zealand’s largest retailer, we’ve been investing in leading-edge payment capabilities to service our retail businesses for many years,” Woolworths Stores and Payments IT general manager Angelo Clayton said.
“We’re pleased to now extend the benefits of our investments to other merchants who may not have the scale to build a payments platform themselves. With HPE, we know we have a reliable and trusted partner to support the growth of our payments platform into the next phase.”
The group behind one of Australia’s largest supermarket chains launched Wpay in June to offer end-to-end payment solutions to merchants in Australia.
Wpay is expected to compete head-to-head with some of the country’s big banks, with its offerings to include an in-store and digital payments system that supports traditional card payments, digital wallets, and “alternative” payment methods; payment services including transaction processing, funds settlement, fraud management, reporting and merchant analytics; and gift card program management, including sale, redemption, and distribution partnership.
The services will be offered to merchants outside of the group, such as EG Australia. It will also be the payments provider to BWS and Dan Murphy’s.
According to Woolworths, Wpay will trial what it is referring to as “new ways” of helping customers pay digitally in-store in the coming months.
Recently, Woolworths spent AU$223 million to increase its shareholding in data science and analytics firm Quantium.
Under the deal, Woolworths increased its stake from 47% to 75%, while Quantium founders and team members retained 25%. Woolworths initially purchased a 50% share of Quantium in 2013 for approximately AU$20 million.
Earlier this year, the company announced it would plough AU$50 million over the next three years to train more than 60,000 staff in new tech-related skills including in digital, data analytics, machine learning, and robotics.