Equinix REIT : Melbourne or Sydney? It’s the wrong question for the best financial services

From a financial services perspective, Sydney has traditionally been home to Australia's stock exchanges and regulatory bodies, but Melbourne is an increasingly attractive destination for new players. Melbourne now ranks 10^th for banking in the Global Financial Centres Index - three places higher than Sydney - as this momentum builds.[1]

Fast-growing industry disrupters including Afterpay, Airwallex and Marqeta have all recently set up or expanded their presence in Melbourne. Swiss fintech Tradeplus24 advised other startups to do the same after landing here two years ago.[2]

Whether you're a big bank or a challenger brand, or a fintech or a payments service company weighing up if you should concentrate your efforts in one market or the other is asking the wrong question. Providing competitive financial services in Australia requires strong links between the two.

As part of expansion efforts, financial services organisations must assess their digital maturity and accelerate transformation initiatives across both cities. It's about connecting easily and securely with cloud providers, network service providers and other financial services counterparties including retail banks, payment processors, stock exchanges and fraud detection platforms. This minimises risk, improves performance and reduces cost.

Equinix has expanded its Melbourne presence in recent years and operates four facilities within 20 kilometres of each other, including two adjacent facilities in our Port Melbourne campus. This is ideal for financial services organisations that require a high-availability architecture for applications deployed within the metro area, while offering direct links to our global platform including high-speed interstate connectivity to Sydney.