BPay drops $60 million on Mambo
BPay's losses on its abandoned Mambo project now stand at A$60 million, after the board doubled an impairment first recognised last year.Mambo was an electronic addressing system intended to speed up business and consumer payments.Financial statements for 2012 for Cardlink Services, the joint venture company composed of several Australian banks which own BPay, show the original impairment on the project was $34 million.Costs to finalise the project were $19 million, while the project's wind-up costs were a further $7 million.The Australian banking industry stopped work on the payments project in the middle of last year, with a final decision to drop it being taken in August that year.BPay's costs are only one component of the capital investment by banks in a project that may have cost the industry more than $200 million.