Australian FinTech company profile #186 – Pebl Payments
1. Company Name: Pebl Payments
2. Website: www.peblpay.com.au
3. Key Staff & Titles:
- Elliot Cohen – Co-Founder & CEO
- Schaan O’Hara – Co-Founder
- James Smith – Chief Technology Officer
4. Location(s): Sydney, Australia
5. In one sentence, what does your fintech do?:
Pebl Payments transforms any smartphone or tablet into a full-featured payment terminal, empowering mobile teams from mobile businesses to accept donations and payments via Tap to Pay, QR codes, payment links, and PayID.
6. How / why did you start your fintech company?:
We saw that charities and mobile teams were being left behind by traditional payment solutions that required costly hardware, clunky onboarding, and inflexible contracts. Pebl was born to break down those barriers—with a mission to make mobile payments radically simpler, faster, and more accessible for every organisation.
7. What is the best thing your company has achieved or learnt along the way (this can include awards, capital raising etc)?:
As a 100% bootstrapped company, winning the Platinum POS Innovation Award at the Juniper Research Fintech & Payments Awards 2024 and the APAC Payment Excellence Award for Industry Innovation (beating global banks and tech giants) was a major milestone. But even more powerful has been watching charity volunteers use Pebl for the first time – collecting donations in seconds with nothing but their phone. That real-world impact fuels everything we do.
8. What’s some advice you’d give to an aspiring start-up?:
Solve a real, painful problem – and stay laser-focused on your niche whilst shipping quickly – not perfectly. You don’t need to be everything to everyone. Clarity, simplicity and speed seem to do pretty well against complexity and scale.
9. What’s next for your company? And are you looking to expand overseas or stay focussed on Australia?:
Pebl is doubling down on the Charity/NFP and Trades/Services sectors, with a sharp focus on field-technicians, event-based fundraising and volunteers using their own device to accept donations. We’re almost completed our move to become a PayFac with a global acquirer and will soon be announcing partnerships with global technology providers. Whilst Australia remains our focus, we’re building the infrastructure to scale globally – particularly across Asia-Pacific and North America where mobile-first collection is gaining traction.
10. What other fintechs or companies do you admire?:
Whilst probably a competitor (not that they’ve heard of us – yet), we admire Square for its design-led product strategy; and the likes of Raisely and Funraisin for their commitment to purpose-driven innovation in the charity space.
11. What’s the most interesting or funniest moment that’s happened in your company’s lifetime?:
Early on, we had an 86-year-old volunteer at a charity BBQ complete their first Tap to Pay transaction on their own phone – less than 30 seconds after downloading the app. She called it “witchcraft” and then proceeded to bring in over $1100 in donations that afternoon. It was around this moment we thought we might have something worth sharing.
