Australia leads non-core markets in fintech investment deals, but what does the sector need to grow?
Australia has emerged alongside Brazil as a leading fintech market after facilitating the largest fintech investment deals outside of the core markets of Asia, Europe and North America in the past 12 months, a report from CB Insights has found.
The Global Fintech Trends report analysed global trends and found that half of the 10 largest fintech deals outside of core markets took place in Australia between the second quarter of 2016 and the second quarter of 2017. The remaining four took place in Brazil, and one took place in South Africa.
Online small business lending platform Prospa topped the five Australian deals that made the list with its AirTree Ventures-led $25 million Series C raise, while loan quote platform SocietyOne was close behind after raising $24 million in a Series C funding round early last year.
Melbourne-based Forex startup AirWallex was next in line, securing a $17.4 Series A funding round in May, followed by Sydney digital mortgage startup Uno, which raised $16.5 million from Westpac last September. Payments platform Assembly Payments, which closed a Carsales-led $14 million Series A last June, rounded out Australia’s representation in the list.
Australia has been leading the charge for the establishment of a robust fintech sector, with the Victorian government recently announcing a future fintech hub and festival, Stone & Chalk revealing plans for an “agri-fintech” hub to “accelerate and amplify” the fintech ecosystem, and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission inking fintech cooperation agreements with Malaysia, Japan and Hong Kong to encourage international fintech expansion.
Meanwhile, on the demand side of the equation, Australian consumers have been eager to embrace fintech, ranking fifth in the world for fintech adoption, with one in three digital consumers using fintech technologies.
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