Commonwealth Bank has extended its partnership with Microsoft to further ongoing cyber security initiatives and develop generative AI applications. The bank said in a statement that the expanded work with Microsoft would cover the development of CommBank Copilot, a faster customer query response system; enhanced cyber security; tools for bank staff to use generative AI; and tools for the banks’ engineering teams to use AI. CBA group chief information officer Gavin Munroe said Microsoft engineers had already started working on a set of experiments involving “real life use cases”. Pepper Money chief executive Mario Rehayem has been appointed chair of the Australian Finance Industry Association. Rehayem takes over from Peter Jones, the managing director of Nissan Financial Services Australia and New Zealand, who joined the AFIA board in 2017 and was appointed chair in 2020. Rental property portal Rent.com.au has expanded payment options for users of its RentPay service, partnering with Novatti to provide Alipay, WeChat Pay and UnionPay in a bid to win business from migrants, foreign students and Australian expatriates. RentPay, which was launched in 2022, allows renters to schedule rent payments, build a payment buffer and access short-term funding when needed to meet a shortfall. Rent.com.au said it has 8700 active RentPay users and has handled A$200 million of rent payments on the platform since it launched.