Big banks’ fintech Beem It harassed us: Finch boss Shahirah Gardner

Australian start-up Finch has been the victim of harassment and IP infringement by a company operated by three of the big four banks, according to Finch’s boss Shahirah Gardner.

Ms Gardner’s fintech start-up Finch launched in 2017 as a peer-to-peer money app offering both instant payments and group expense tracking. One of its key competitors is Beem It, a start-up- style joint effort between three of the big four banks: CBA, NAB and Westpac.

According to Ms Gardner, in October 2018 her company’s fraud monitoring system picked up groups of users who were engaging in hundreds of sessions in the Finch app without actually transacting. “We became aware those users were employees of Beem It,” she told The Australian. “They then created several more groups inside the app, which were for research and reverse engineering. We let that be for the time being; we happily encourage competition.”

Ms Gardner said the behaviour from Beem It employees “turned nasty”, including behaviour that violated Finch’s terms of service.

“They used offensive language, they posted naked photos and racial slurs,” she said. “We felt it was an attempt to attack our business.”

The Australian has verified screenshots of the behaviour, which include expletives and sexual references as well as illustrations that suggest the employees were examining how to reverse engineer Finch’s group expense functionality.

Finch filed a report to the ACCC in December 2018, but was told it was outside of the regulator’s jurisdiction.

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Source: Big banks’ fintech Beem It harassed us: Finch boss Shahirah Gardner