Australian FinTech company profile #36

Australian FinTech company profile #36 – PayDock

Key Staff & Titles: Robert Lincolne (CEO & Founder), Simon Lenton (COO), Carmen Lincolne (Operations Manager), Sergey Shaklein (Technical Product Manager), Lyndon Buckley (Strategic Product Manager) Alex Omelchenko (Senior Security Manager)

In one sentence, what does your fintech do?: We are a payment platform, that increases merchants’ bottom lines by removing costly adoption barriers between payment service providers through a Level 1 PCI compliant, API, dashboard, card vault, recurring engine and payment integration kit.

How / why did you start your fintech company?: PayDock originated in the for-cause sector, where we sought to build a sophisticated real-time payments analytics engine to provide visibility into donor behavior. During that time we discovered the “payments pain” over and over again. We rapidly pivoted into online payments and never looked back. PayDock was born in 2015 and went to market fully PCI compliant late 2016. While our customer base has broadened, a large percentage of our customer base is still not-for-profits. With the market becoming more fragmented we believe PayDock’s vision of an accessible, simple and agnostic payments marketplace for merchants holds more value than ever.

What the best thing your company has achieved or learnt along the way (this can include awards, capital raising etc)?: The most valuable lesson we’ve learned is that a committed, vision-oriented team is key. Achievements along the way? Becoming a Level 1 PCI compliant payments platform ahead of some larger providers was a huge milestone for us demonstrating our ability to innovate quickly – along with our expansion into the UK early 2019 to further grow our global traction.

What’s some advice you’d give to an aspiring start-up?: Be absolutely relentless, positive and trust your gut – and never believe the hype. Find a trusted mentor whose had some battle scars will also go a long way. People will question your choices – and that’s okay. They’re not in the trenches so take it all in your stride.

What’s next for your company? And are you looking to expand overseas or stay focussed on Australia?: We’ve recently opened an office in London and are making it our 2019 mission to expand our growth in the UK and EU market. Australia continues to stay on our roadmap of course and we continue to attract some amazing opportunities here.

What other fintechs or companies do you admire?: I’ve personally loved watching our dear friends at Seatfrog, who expanded from Australia to the UK last year in a fast, sophisticated and brave way. We sat near each other in Tyro Fintech Hub back in the day, and their strategic approach and tight management is an example to me. I continue to stay close to those guys and girls. Otherwise, I’ve always admired the Apple story for Steve Job’s ‘crazy’ dream and relentless aim for perfection.

What’s the most interesting or funniest moment that’s happened in your company’s lifetime?: Simon eating a sugarcube in front of a senior tax advisor because he was so hungry – and keeping a straight face as well as working with my wife and surprising customers or investors by calling a colleague ‘darling’