Bunnings expands PowerPass
Part of the big box retailer's tradie acquisition moves
The PowerPass app allows eligible members to search for products in-store, scan the item and use self-checkout
Thu Mar 21 2019
At its most recent earnings presentation in February, Bunnings Australia & New Zealand (BANZ) managing director Michael Schneider revealed the big box retailer broadened the scope of its PowerPass app and store credit facility for its trade customers.
Launched in September 2018, Mr Schneider explained the app allowed eligible members to search for products in-store, scan the item and use self-checkout.
Already trialled on click-and-collect power tools, he estimated there were already 30,000 users of the app. Bunnings has added trade credit and cash pre-pay facilities to PowerPass that allow online account management for ABN holders.
According to iTnews, this means that tradies can be steered away from more expensive payment instruments like credit cards and towards cheaper options like BPAY as services such as the New Payments Platform gradually get bigger.
A PowerPass Credit account for up to $5000 has a rate of 8.9%, much lower than many other credit cards. A 30-day account can run a facility up to $10,000. Interest free periods of up to 60 days and lower rates would also appeal to tradies.
Bunnings gets to harvest rich data off these customers. Digital receipting would also allow it to send data back to apps tradies use like Xero or MYOB. As payments migrate to digital wallets and phones, that could position Bunnings well in terms of using analytics and customer data.
Data breach
Bunnings recently confirmed it notified the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner of a data breach, after an individual staffer set up an employee performance monitoring database on his home computer and exposed it to the internet.
The information in the database related to a single Bunnings store and was not hosted on internal systems, a company spokesperson told iTnews. It was accessible over the web, and contained staff and customer information.
Lee Johnstone from security firm CTRLBox reported the data breach to Mr Schneider earlier this year. Within hours of the report, the database was taken down.
A limited number of Bunnings staff member details such as names and internal identification numbers were in the database, along with comments on employee performance. Most of the comments were positive, Mr Johnstone noted. The database also contained log in credentials for staff and developers. Contact details of almost 1200 customers were exposed, including email and addresses, and phone numbers.
The Bunnings spokesperson said the company was not aware of any malicious access to the database. Mr Schneider explained in a statement that the database was created by a Bunnings team member as an administration tool, and to assist in keeping local customers updated about activities and events.
Doing so however was a breach of Bunnings' data policy guidelines, Mr Schneider said, and apologised for what has happened.
Bunnings will reinforce its data and privacy policies with staff to prevent future data leaks. The retailer has contacted customers and employees affected by the data breach, Mr Schneider said.
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