Careers

What first attracted you to Cuscal?

I started as an intern. I was part of the UTS BIT program and as a sponsor, Cuscal would take in two interns every 6 months. I was lucky enough to be one of them.

After the internship, I joined part time and liked it so much that once I finished my studies two years later, I joined full time and have been here ever since.

What are the best things about working at Cuscal?

The team is very supportive. They want to see me grow and they help me as much as possible. They don’t just allow me to learn from different functions, they actively reach out to me to see what I can do and learn.

The work itself is fascinating. The culture is one where they genuinely care about you, want you to succeed and have fun.

How would you describe the people?

Willing to learn. The payments industry is niche, so you have to be willing to do your research, always learn and stay at the forefront of the industry. It goes beyond asking questions and Googling. You need to do that, but also need to look at documentation, analyse the systems, and figure out how it’s relevant or how could it be applied to what you’re trying to achieve. You need to continually learn.

What excites you about the future?

Payments! A lot of fintechs are popping up. Our ability to work with them, help them in the market, is so exciting. New technology that’s coming into play is always so fun to learn. So having an existing industry but injected with all these new technologies is really exciting.

What does enabling the future mean to you?

It means ensuring our products are capable of growing to support our client in the future. You have to look at how the consumers are acting and predict what they’re going to do. I’m in the card issuing space – how do they use a debit card? What kind of features should be useful in the future? What are the improvements we can do to help the customer experience (and therefore our clients’ ability to grow). You’re leading, innovating, and making a difference.

What first attracted you to Cuscal?

I was happily working at a large international bank and received a call about them. I was curious as I’d never heard of them before. I liked the idea of moving from B2C to B2B and into a product role – we were launching a card management platform at the time. That doesn’t happen very often in an organisation, so I absolutely wanted to be part of it.

How did you know Cuscal was the place for you?

I’d been offered the role but was worried about telling them I was pregnant and would need to take parental leave at a critical point in the project. Without missing a beat, they told me I was the best person for the job, they were actually surprised I was worried. In that moment, I thought ’wow! that says a lot about the culture of the company and its values, and I knew it was the place for me. It’s meritocratic. I’ve since had another baby while at Cuscal and continue to experience its support. I’ve never felt the fact that I’m female or taking parental leave impacted the opportunities made available to me. It’s meritocratic and I’ve really enjoyed the diversity of roles and opportunities I have had since joining Cuscal.

What’s been your biggest surprise?

The willingness of leaders to engage with the teams with respect to strategy. I’ve always felt I’ve been genuinely engaged and consulted in the overall direction of Cuscal. That’s why I’ve stuck around for so long, it’s been that the leadership team are generous with sharing thoughts and seeking views. I’ve felt like I’m part of the journey not just being directed where to go. There’s no way I would get that at the international bank where your spans of control were very restricted to your geography and then global make all the big calls. Here, we’re genuinely much closer to the action and then held to account to bring it to life.

Proudest moment so far?

When Cuscal decided to embark on the operational model transformation. It’s not easy to say, ‘I think we need to change’, but we have the guts to make those big decisions when it’s the right thing for the company.

What excites you about the future?

I think we can truly be the leader in payments and leave our competitors in a trail of dust. Whilst we’re happy with our innovation and successes to date, we take innovation seriously, even transforming ourselves. That’s why Cuscal now doesn’t look anything like it did when it started 30 years ago or even six years ago when I joined. We’ll keep changing and that’s what makes it exciting. Who knows what Cuscal will look like in 10 years.

Tell us about your Cuscal journey so far?

I’ve grown a lot. I started as a Developer at Cuscal and within a few months I was offered a Developer, Team Lead role. Later I became a Solutions Designer and after 4 years moved into a Solutions Architect role. After a further 3 years I pivoted into my current Solutions Consultant role which helps me build on the client engagement and pre-sales experience. In my experience at Cuscal, I’ve been given a lot of opportunity to grow and develop my career. I’ve felt appreciated and valued by Cuscal, and I am happy that I can continue to make a difference to our clients.

What kind of people are Cuscal people?

People who are passionate about what they do, who actually make effort to understand things, take interest and actively try to make things better. Everyone is of similar DNA where they actually care, learn things and apply that knowledge and most importantly, share it.

What do you love about your job?

Once the solutions are implemented for clients, we don’t just say ‘thanks, bye.’ We actually get to see the solution working for the client and their customers. It is great to see the value in the work you’ve done by the value it creates for them.

Your proudest moment so far?

There have been many proud moments in the different roles I have held at Cuscal. Some of those include being an acquiring SME, the onboarding of some fintechs new to the Australian market, being a part of launching The Pays in Australia and receiving the We Think Customer quarterly award. I also appreciate the opportunity to be able to engage with clients in my new role and to contribute and influence in Technology and Product roadmaps and technology initiatives. I see that Cuscal sees the value in my knowledge that I’ve gained.

What does enabling the future mean to you?

It means onboarding clients faster, smoother, more efficiently. We’re servicing fintech businesses who don’t have two years to run projects and new systems be brought in or products being designed. Cuscal has a niche place in the industry.

What excites you about the future?

There’s a lot of new things. We’re moving away from only servicing traditional banks to new initiatives, open banking, NPP acquiring and new types of clients. That means a whole new mix of technology and potential. Cuscal leads new initiatives in the industry and that’s always exciting to be part of We have all sorts of products; we serve a diverse range of clients which helps us to always aspire to be nimble and efficient.

What’s kept you at Cuscal for more than a decade?

Cuscal is always changing. It’s never the same so it’s always interesting. It’s still interesting and my role has changed a lot too. The constant change is what keeps me here.

What's the best thing about working at Cuscal?

The career development plans are amazing. I’ve been enjoying that personally through my career, they really support you in where you want to learn and grow, where you want to take your career.

The other thing I’d say is the fact that we’re challenging the big banks – it’s one of the reasons I’m so proud of Cuscal.

What kind of people are Cuscal people?

I think people who have the mindset of the smaller clients, not just the big corporate clients of the big banks. Really understanding their business, and their customers. How can we help them achieve their goals without the capital big players have? How do they attract more customers with products we offer? What would their customers want and need? It’s understanding the core issue and having the empathy and mindset to want to know that.

Proudest moment so far?

I along with two colleagues came up with a concept on how we could improve things. I thought it would be hard to get off the ground, but I reached out to the COO, and she listened to the idea, completely supported it and endorsed it. Coming from a bottom-up approach to an idea and supporting enough to try and bring it to life, it’s very cool. Now I’m seconded into that initiative. It’s something I’m very proud of personally, and of Cuscal for it.

What does enabling the future mean to you?

From Product, it’s about bringing new features to the market by listening to what the clients want, what’s the future for them and providing products and features that give them the opportunity to take advantage of that.

What first attracted you to Cuscal?

I’d come from a major bank, and I guess the attractiveness was, it was like a start-up, building products from scratch, trying to launch something from scratch. At Cuscal we build the capability in-house and then take it to market. When you look across our record, it speaks for itself. The 86400 business exists because we thought there was a missing product in the market, so we went out and built that. That’s part of the culture here, if there’s a need, we’ll build it and launch it.

What was your biggest surprise when you joined?

How complex payment is! I didn’t even know what a switch was. I learnt everything from scratch. I had deep card knowledge but not payment which is a very complex business when you get into the detail.

What do you love about working at Cuscal?

It offers career opportunities. This is my sixth role here. I’ve moved around sideways and upwards. It’s a small company when it comes to structure so you can go into different areas, expand your knowledge and Cuscal is very supportive of that.

Secondly, it’s innovative. It’s almost a start-up feel where we’re very supportive of new ideas. We were the first company to launch NPP payment. For our size, we punch above our weight when it comes to innovation in the market.

For employees, that means you’re at the forefront of any development. The whole culture of the company is about learning and continuing to stay at the forefront of the industry. If there’s a new technology being proposed in the market, you’ll know about it because Cuscal will be there offering ideas on how we can shape that.

What kind of people are Cuscal people?

They’re curious You’ve got to have a sense of curiosity, how things work. Whether you have the answer or not, it’s about exploring and finding solutions together.
You’ve also got to have resilience. Sometimes things just don’t turn out the way you thought they would. You have to get back up and go again.

What does enabling the future mean to you?

It’s about working in partnership with our clients and enabling them to grow. We want to share in the growth with our clients, so if they grow, we grow too.

What first attracted you to Cuscal?

The breadth of technology we have. It’s almost like a tech shop at this point with the sort of services we offer and the infrastructure we have. I don’t think working at bigger companies, you’d really get the exposure and get to touch so many technologies in my position. You’d be pigeon-holed, whereas here, I touch everything. From the lowest level of storage to servers and active directory, cloud, all sorts of stuff. It’s really interesting, you can’t be bored. There are so many things to keep you excited and to learn.

Proudest moment so far?

Leading the roll-out of Office 365 in our business. It was a gigantic task where there were so many streams involved in the design, the assessment, the implementation. It affected every single person at Cuscal. Cuscal provided me with the support, the tools, the time, everything I needed to learn and lead it effectively. It is something that I’m really proud of.

What does enabling the future mean to you?

It means being at the forefront of technology. Being able to best serve our clients. We’ve got cloud presence, we’re at the front of technology like NPP and we’re able to adapt and implement very quickly. All of it helps our clients grow, and when they grow, so do we.

What does What’s it like to work at Cuscal?

It’s all about the wonderful people. Hard workers. When we’re in the office together, we bounce off each other’s energy. I leave work feeling energised and pumped to get in there and work harder.

Cuscal has a people-first approach and that matches me because I’m absolutely about making sure my team are happy, they’re working well, and they’ve got all the support they need. And that’s something I experience myself at Cuscal too. They’re flexible with how you work, everyone is understanding and supportive of people to be healthy outside of work and actively promote it. They definitely don’t want you exhausting yourself trying to get everything done. They will step in and help you.

What excites you about the future?

What excites me is being able to continue to learn and implement new technology, even after 14 years at Cuscal. I’ll have the opportunity to expand on skills I already have and learn new things. I’m excited to see Cuscal continue to grow and what that means for potential career movements for me too.