Wpay

About Wpay

Woolworths started building its own payments plumbing in 2007 and processed its first payment that July. For years it was just internal infrastructure. Then on 2 June 2021 the group carved it out as Wpay and started selling it to other retailers, with the entity registered in December 2020 ahead of the launch. At launch Woolworths said it was pushing more than 1.3 billion transactions worth over $50 billion a year through the platform and called itself Australia’s fifth-largest card payment processor. Paul Monnington, the group’s former fintech general manager and the man behind Scan&Go, was first managing director; Chris Mills holds the role now. Early external users were BWS and Dan Murphy’s, which went with Endeavour Group when it demerged, plus the EG service station network.

What it actually sells is card acquiring plus the gateway and the gear around it — in-store and online card and digital wallet acceptance, transaction processing, fraud management, reporting and merchant analytics, and gift card program management. In its July 2023 submission to the Reserve Bank, Wpay described itself as serving primarily larger merchants inside and outside Woolworths, plus some smaller merchants through payment service provider partners. That is the honest shape of it: if you are a single-site cafe you are far more likely to meet Wpay through a reseller than directly. It has leaned on outside technology where it suits — Gr4vy for payment orchestration, Zepto for PayTo.

On ownership the record is cleaner than the chatter. Wpay sits in Woolworths Group’s complementary services bucket alongside Media and Rewards, and that is exactly how it is reported. The half-year announcement of 25 February 2026 and the 2026 annual report, lodged 26 August 2026, both mention Wpay only as a contributor to that group’s sales growth — no sale, no divestment, no discontinued operation, no strategic review. The flipside is what Woolworths does not publish: there is no standalone revenue, earnings or valuation figure for Wpay anywhere in the group’s disclosures, because it has never been broken out on its own line. Its site now says it handles more than 1.5 billion transactions a year with over 200 specialists.