Australian FinTech company profile #151 – BAXE
1. Company Name: BAXE
2. Website: www.baxe.com
3. Key Staff & Titles:
Christian Moore, Chief Executive Officer
Dylan Blankenship, Chief Technology Officer
Andrew Broad, Chief Operating Officer
James Maher, Chief Financial Officer
Ben Lightfoot, Chief Marketing Officer
4. Location(s):
BAXE is a global company, we have team members based all around the world. Our headquarters is located in Brisbane, Australia and we also have a satellite office in Singapore.
5. In one sentence, what does your fintech do?:
BAXE is a lifestyle app that is everything you love about the Internet – with the security of blockchain technology.
6. How / why did you start your fintech company?:
The BAXE project was conceived a couple of years ago. We took inspiration from WeChat in China, which demonstrated enormous consumer demand for a communications platform integrated with payments and a vibrant ecosystem of self-contained apps and mini programs.
Taking inspiration from this successful model, we developed BAXE to enable the world’s first truly open and connected digital economy. By embracing the latest technologies, we aim to Take Back the Internet, restoring it to what it was meant to be. This means bringing everything you love about the Internet into the one place, with the security of blockchain technology. We want users to chat, video, share, browse, bank, shop, stream, invest in crypto, NFTs… all without giving up their data or security.
7. What is the best thing your company has achieved or learnt along the way (this can include awards, capital raising etc)?:
We’re still quite early on in our journey as a company, given we are only planning to launch the BAXE app at the end of Q2 this year. However, we would say our partnerships with leading companies including ConsenSys, Salesforce, Accubits, IDEMIA, Haventec, Gemini and Herjavec have been our biggest achievements to date.
In particular, our partnership with ConsenSys has taught as many lessons as we work to bridge the gap between traditional finance and crypto. Given the limited activity in this area, we are constantly uncovering new discoveries when abstracting away the challenges and complexities of crypto for everyday users.
8. What’s some advice you’d give to an aspiring start-up?:
Our advice would be to always make the user or customer central to your work and mission as a start-up. Whether that involves ensuring your product is user friendly and intuitive, or your service addresses a common pain point for customers, your work should always come back to the user and what they need.
Keeping the user front of mind will also help with marketing later in your journey!
9. What’s next for your company? And are you looking to expand overseas or stay focussed on Australia?:
We have made a lot of progress over the last six months. Our app is now reaching the final stages of the alpha launch and will soon go live to the public at the end of Q2 2022. We will be launching the app in Ireland at the end of Q2 2022, before expanding to the EU, then the Asia Pacific region.
Apart from this, our partnership with ConsenSys is nearing deployment, enabling our blockchain capabilities. We’ve got a big year ahead of us in 2022 and can’t wait to see what unfolds as we Take Back the Internet!
10. What other fintechs or companies do you admire?:
We’ve drawn inspiration from existing super apps across the globe, admiring the work of WeChat, GoJek and Grab. These companies have built user centric, all-encompassing apps which are embedded into the lives of everyday people.
The financial super app, Revolut is also achieving great things within the fintech space and growing exponentially. We admire the quantity and quality of services the fintech provides for their users, all within a single app. Here at BAXE, we respect the ground-breaking work these companies are doing in shifting industry and consumer expectations.
11. What’s the most interesting or funniest moment that’s happened in your company’s lifetime?:
We’ve had a great time building the BAXE brand and fine-tuning a bold, charming brand voice. We made a conscious effort to move away from a corporate or terminology-heavy brand, so our product can appeal to both fintech enthusiasts and mainstream users.
With the help of our partners and the digital branding agency, Rocket Surgery Ideas, we loved putting together a video that encapsulates the BAXE brand. You can watch it here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElqvRggduSI
