CommBank continues its rise in the Kantar BrandZ Most Valuable Global Brands and enters top 10 in global financial services category. AI propels unprecedented growth of world's top 100 with Google crowned new no.1. Sydney, 14 May 2026: CommBank has been listed as the 68th most valuable brand in the world in Kantar's BrandZ 2026 Most Valuable Global Brands released today, which quantifies how brand contributes to enterprise value. CommBank achieved a brand value of USD $43.3 billion, rising six places from 2025. It also enters the top 10 this year in the most valuable financial services brands category at #10, rising one place from 2025. The rankings solidify CommBank's position as a leader in financial services and highlights its impact on consumers. Globally, the financial services sector experienced significant growth, with gains driven by a strong performance in traditional banks like Chase and HSBC building stronger consumer relationships rooted in trust. Kantar Australia Head of Brand Strategy Ryan France says success through brand investment has seen CommBank enjoy a long run of strong year-on-year performance, almost tripling its brand value since before the pandemic. "CommBank's strength is that it doesn't rely on telling people it's better. It shows them. The experience matches the promise: it's smoother, the tech is more intuitive, and improvements are visible over time. It's in how the brand shows up too: more human, less institutional, and connected to modern Australian life, all wrapped in distinctive and consistent brand codes." "While many competitors are investing in similar areas, CommBank has been more successful at turning that investment into something customers genuinely notice and value. This goes beyond simply being 'big'. CommBank is sustaining brand-driven demand that is strong enough for customers to tolerate frictions like fees and rate moves better than they might with a more commoditised bank." CommBank Chief Marketing Officer Jo Boundy says, "Being recognised as one of the world's most valuable brands, and the only Australian brand in the Global 100, reflects the work our teams do every day to deliver better experiences for our customers. Across the bank, we're focused on making banking simpler, more intuitive and more relevant to people's everyday lives through digital tools, technology and how we show up in communities. Supporting the communities we serve is central to this, because building trust and long-term value is a whole of bank effort that goes beyond products and services." The other Australian highlight is Woolworths ($10.7 billion) rising one place in the retail category at #19. It's been a positive year overall for retail globally, as its top brands grow 18%. Category leader Amazon remains far ahead and has risen 17% year on year. Like many leading retail brands, it has benefitted from two big sector shifts: AI's move from pilot to mainstream and the rise of retail media networks. AI's acceleration results in a profound shift in brand value AI is pushing the threshold to enter the Kantar BrandZ global top 100 ranking to its highest level. People are now experiencing brands through thousands of AI-shaped moments, from personalised feeds to LLMs that influence what they see and choose. As machines increasingly surface and weigh content, standing out as meaningful and different has become more important for brands, not less. Kantar's latest data proves that the power of brand persists, with the combined value of the BrandZ global top 100 now a record $13.1 trillion (up 22% on last year). In a historic first, three brands have simultaneously broken the trillion-dollar threshold, with Google (#1: $1.5tn), Microsoft (#3: $1.1tn) and Amazon (#4: $1.0tn) joining Apple (#: $1.4tn). Google's brand value surged by 57% year-on-year to claim the number one spot for the first time since 2018, ending Apple's four consecutive years at the top. Its rise has been carefully built around the integration of Gemini into all existing products, the introduction of agentic features in search and continued investment in data centres. A standout in the ranking this year, Claude has debuted in the global top 100 at #27, with a brand value of just under $100bn ($96.6bn). Meanwhile, ChatGPT recorded the highest year-on-year brand value increase, rising by 285%; the only brand in history to see a bigger increase in the top 100 was Blackberry, which rose by 390% in 2008. Zara has also become the world's most valuable apparel brand, overtaking longstanding leader Nike in a clear testament to its ability to build relevance through personalised AI-powered shopping experiences. Gareth O'Neill, Head of Brand Guidance for Kantar in Australia and APAC, says "AI is accelerating growth. And it has also made marketing harder. Marketers are digesting more signals than ever, decisions have to be made faster, and it's less clear what actually matters. The brands outperforming the market are using AI to bring judgement back into the system: to identify which signals to trust, connect what people are doing to real business choices, and do so quickly and confidently. In a market this fragmented, sustained growth is coming from clarity." About Kantar BrandZ Kantar BrandZ is the global currency when assessing brand value, quantifying the contribution of brands to business' financial performance. Kantar's annual global and local brand valuation rankings combine rigorously analysed financial data with extensive brand equity research. Since 1998, BrandZ has shared brand-building insights with business leaders based on interviews with 4.6 million consumers, for over 22,000 brands in 54 markets. Discover more about Kantar BrandZ here. About Kantar Kantar is the world's leading marketing data and analytics business. Kantar Australia deliver the intelligence needed to power brand growth. Kantar Australia provide the signals that help organisations act quickly and confidently. Kantar Australia empower brands to make effective marketing decisions based on predictive evidence. And Kantar Australia help them craft powerful growth strategies rooted in the connection between consumers, brands and enterprise value. All this is powered by its uniquely robust human and synthetic data, its unrivalled IP, its AI-native platform and the team of global brand experts that bring this all together. www.kantar.com

CommBank partners with Bancstac to strengthen digital payment infrastructure. Signs long-term Technology Services Master Agreement for the deployment of Bank-controlled payment infrastructure The Commercial Bank of Ceylon has announced that it has entered into a long-term Technology Services Master Agreement with Bancstac, to deploy a secure, compliant, scalable and fully bank-controlled payment processing infrastructure, reinforcing the Bank's leadership in digital financial services. Commercial Bank will instruct merchants to integrate with its Internet Payment Gateway (IPG) and associated technology modules to process online and card-not-present transactions. The solution establishes a direct, secured and encrypted connection between the Bank's core systems and Bancstac's payment infrastructure, with no reliance on third-party intermediaries. Both authorisation of transactions and the settlement of funds will continue to be routed through the Commercial Bank switch, a product of Euronet Worldwide, ensuring that transaction processing remains under the Bank's full visibility and governance. The Commercial Bank IPG currently supports Visa, Mastercard and UnionPay, and will be enhanced to include JCB and Sri Lanka's own National Card Schemes. It also supports LankaQR and other non-card payment methods, reinforcing the Bank's strategy to expand e-commerce, QR acceptance and alternative digital payment channels. Through this single integration, Commercial Bank gains access to a comprehensive Bancstac technology suite with 24/7 monitoring, proactive alerting, operational support, issues resolution, merchant integration assistance, and continuous system maintenance and upgrades covering merchant onboarding and administration tools, advanced fraud mitigation and risk management capabilities, compliance enhancements for continuous regulatory and payment network participation obligations, refund and chargeback handling, tokenisation, hosted payment pages, scheduled payments, simplified e-commerce features and batch payment processing. The Bank receives transaction data, system logs, and automated reporting, reconciliation and settlement information, enabling the Bank to verify the accuracy of fee calculations and transaction integrity in real time. Bancstac maintains the highest global payment industry security certifications and standards, including PCI-DSS and PCI-3DS certifications, management systems aligned with ISO 27001 information security standards, and data protection and privacy standards compliant with GDPR. Importantly, Commercial Bank retains full authority over merchant onboarding, access management, reporting visibility, system usage and end-to-end fee assessment. The agreed monthly fee structure is designed to be transparent, predictable and cost-effective, with the Bank maintaining oversight of all merchant interactions, refund approvals and risk management processes. The solution meets all of the Bank's compliance and data security requirements, and the regulatory requirements of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka relating to payment processing and data protection. Mr Seevali Wickaramasinghe, Chief Manager - Card Center at Commercial Bank said the agreement marks a decisive step in the Bank's digital transformation journey. "This long-term partnership with Bancstac enables us to modernise our payment gateway infrastructure with direct connectivity, full operational visibility and complete governance control. By adopting a fully secured and scalable technology stack, we are strengthening our capacity to support the rapid growth and innovation of e-commerce and digital payments in Sri Lanka, while ensuring that transaction processing remains firmly within the Bank's risk and compliance framework," he said. Mr Evan Lau, CEO - Bancstac, said: "We are deeply committed to delivering secure sovereign financial infrastructure and future-ready payment technologies in support of the Bank's ambition to provide a reliable, modern and secure digital payment experience to merchants and customers. Our strategic collaboration with Commercial Bank brings together advanced payment gateway and orchestration capabilities, continuous innovation, PCI-DSS and PCI-3DS certified infrastructure and industry leading operational support under a single, integrated framework. This collaboration also allows the Bank's merchants to apply directly to Bancstac to seamlessly enable payment acceptance from American Express, Discover Network and Diners Club cardholders." The Bank said merchants using the Bank's acquiring services will gain access to a continuous pipeline of future payment innovations that will be seamlessly launched within the Commercial Bank IPG without the need for any additional integration work by merchants. Digital transactions will be processed through this enhanced payment infrastructure and direct gateway-to-bank connectivity, which translates into higher authentication rates, faster authorisations, strengthened security, smoother payment experiences with fewer transaction failures and greater system uptime. Merchants will have access to multiple global card schemes, QR-based options, seamless refunds and dispute resolution supported by the Bank's robust governance framework. This strategic collaboration represents a significant milestone in Commercial Bank's ongoing digital transformation initiatives and aligns with Sri Lanka's broader shift toward a digital-first financial ecosystem. Bancstac provides sovereign and politically neutral payment infrastructure to licensed financial institutions. Bancstac maintains direct connectivity to core banking systems, global payment networks and alternative forms of digital payments. It also develops, and helps to seamlessly launch, any bank requested payment innovation at fintech speed. Commercial Bank is the first Sri Lankan bank with a market capitalisation exceeding US$ 1 Bn. and was also the first bank in the country to be listed among the Top 1000 Banks of the World. Commercial Bank has the highest capital base among all Sri Lankan banks, is the largest private sector lender in Sri Lanka, and the largest lender to the country's SME sector. Ranked No. 1 in the Business Today Top 40, Commercial Bank is recognised as the most respected and most-awarded Bank in Sri Lanka. Commercial Bank is also a leader in digital innovation and is Sri Lanka's first 100% carbon-neutral bank. Commercial Bank operates a network of 272 strategically located branches and automated machines island-wide, and has the widest international footprint among Sri Lankan banks, with 20 branches in Bangladesh, a fully-fledged Tier I Bank with a majority stake in the Maldives, a microfinance company in Myanmar, and a representative office in the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC). The Bank's fully owned subsidiaries, CBC Finance PLC and Commercial Insurance Brokers (Pvt) Limited, also deliver a range of financial services via their own branch networks.