Zip Group CEO Cynthia Scott: Innovation is part of culture, but guardrails needed for AI

Cynthia Scott says the payments company is built around tech, guardrails will be needed for AI.

Zip Group CEO Cynthia Scott says momentum is improving. Picture: John Feder/The Australian.

CEO SURVEY 2025: FULL COVERAGE

Economy

How would you rate the momentum of the Australian economy as we head into 2025? Official forecasts have Australia trimming interest rates from the first half of calendar 2025, is that consistent with your view? What are you seeing around inflation in your own business?

In a challenging cost-of-living environment, our products provide consumers with greater choice and financial flexibility to manage their household budgets. We provide short and long duration credit products for online and in-store purchases, which means we’re able to meet our over 2 million active Australian and New Zealand customers where they need us, whether that’s everyday needs or life’s bigger events.

Our Australia and New Zealand business saw transaction frequency and spend increase quarter on quarter in the first quarter of FY25, demonstrating the relevance of our products. We’re also continuing to innovate to meet our customers’ evolving needs. Our new product Zip Plus became available to new customers, with the product continuing to demonstrate strong customer engagement and unit economics.

If we do move into a lower interest rate environment in Australia, we anticipate this being a tailwind for our business.

Outlook

What excites you heading into 2025? Are you likely to increase, hold steady, or trim your investment spend?

FY24 was a transformative year, with Zip becoming a stronger, simplified and sustainably profitable business. We have kicked off FY25 with great momentum, the right foundations and a very clear strategy to drive ongoing profitable growth and exceptional customer and merchant experiences. Our first quarter FY25 results saw Zip deliver another strong Cash EBTDA result driven by outstanding US growth. As a team, we’re excited and driven by the significant growth opportunity we see in both our core markets.

Geopolitics

Will a Donald Trump presidency have a potential impact on your business or sector (tariffs or streamlined regulation)? Does geopolitics drive a bigger part of your decision-making?

The US is one of our two core markets and we’re confident about our significant growth opportunity in that market. Zip supports consumer-friendly fit for purpose regulation and we’ll continue to engage constructively with the Government, regulators and other stakeholders to ensure the appropriate settings.

People

Has your organisation’s approach to flexible working – including working from home – evolved during the year. Is this likely to change further into 2025?

We support flexible and hybrid working at Zip and are committed to collaboration, innovation, and team connectivity.

We have adapted our approach to align with each of our regions. In the US the majority of our team work remotely, however, we do retain an office in New York. In Australia and New Zealand we have offices in Sydney, Melbourne, Auckland and Christchurch, where the majority of our team are located. We have a blended model which prioritises flexibility but also sets a clear expectation of at least two days in an office location.

We have had positive feedback and engagement from the team on our flexible working arrangements and will continue to assess our offering based on the team’s feedback and the needs of the business.

We focus on empowering our team to have a say in the most suitable work arrangement to meet their needs and preferences, taking into consideration business, team and customer needs, local and global time zones, balance between work and life commitments, and individual productivity.

Technology

Where is your organisation along the AI journey – is it in the developmental stage, or are you now using the technology at scale across your business? If so, are benefits matching the promise?

Innovation is deeply embedded in our culture and as a company we recognise and celebrate the transformative impacts of technology.

We acknowledge the significant potential of Generative AI (GenAI) and have been exploring and experimenting across a range of opportunities ensuring appropriate safeguards are in place for responsible use.

We saw great engagement from a broad cross-section of our Australia and New Zealand teams for our GenAI-themed hackathon in 2024. Some ideas from the hackathon are moving towards deployment during the next half.

As with any use of technology, there needs to be a clear value proposition for us to progress a use case. We are seeing value in the areas we are taking beyond the experimentation phase, including applications in customer experience, marketing and engineering.