PayPal launches a payments product designed for marketplaces, platforms and crowdfunding sites
PayPal today is beginning the rollout of a new product designed for customers operating larger online marketplaces, like ride-sharing platforms, crowdfunding portals, peer-to-peer e-commerce sites, room rentals platforms, and others. The solution, called simply PayPal for Marketplaces, is designed to be tailored to the business’s needs, based on how much risk they want to manage with regard to their transactions. That means the businesses can decide if they want to handle the payment disputes and chargebacks themselves, or if they want to turn over that responsibility to PayPal to manage instead. Additionally, the new service allows the businesses to customize their implementation of PayPal to fit their needs. For instance, […]
Lakeba’s disruption potential attracts global investor
Sydney tech firm Lakeba Group has welcomed a heavyweight global investor to its board. The man responsible for taking global investment manager T. Rowe Price global, Todd Ruppert, is now part of the team. Lakeba has positioned itself as a start-up studio focused on the development and rapid commercialisation of digital solutions and the company’s co-founder and chief executive, Giuseppe Porcelli, said Mr Ruppert’s international experience would be a key asset. “Todd’s real-time global insights and his experience with start-ups around the world in smart securities, on-demand insurance and crowd-funding will be invaluable as Lakeba grows,” he told The Australian. Mr Ruppert, who was chief executive of T. Rowe Price […]
Bitcoin: Tulip bubble or financial market revolution for young Australians?
You are in your late 20s and live in an east coast capital city. You have a stable career and a bit of spare money, but it’s unlikely you will be able to buy a house in an area where you can hold on to your job. Wages are going nowhere. Yours has been falling behind the cost of living. You’d like more money, but you don’t even have enough to start a share portfolio. You know nothing about how to start a small business, but you do understand the internet and you’ve worked out that something is making your friends rich, very quickly. Suddenly Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies like it […]
Australia a target for international fintechs
Australia’s wealth management industry is an attractive prospect for foreign technology firms and will likely see international players enter the market in coming years, a Microsoft report has found. The Moving Past Prosperity report, which the tech giant conducted in conjunction with Harvard Business Review, said that while payments and lending dominate the Australian fintech landscape, wealth management technology is growing rapidly, according to KPMG data. “Australia hosts the world’s sixth largest pool of funds under management, substantially filled by its compulsory superannuation scheme,” the report said. “With its potential for scale and cost savings through robo-advice, wealth management is expected to attract many international entrants.” Added to this is […]
Fintech startup, Trade Ledger, launches world-first tech to help banks fight off global tech giants
Career technologists, Martin McCann and Dr. Matthias Born, are launching a world-first lending tech for banks and traditional lenders that will help to equip them against competition from tech giants such as Facebook, Tencent, and eBay wanting to enter financial services. Trade Ledger is the world’s first business lending platform that transforms digital data from business supply chains in real time, allowing banks to assess and regularly update credit and default risk of businesses they lend to. Currently this is only done on a one-off or infrequent basis on a very small sample of invoices, and not on any other trade documents. The platform will finally give banks more advanced network and data […]
Bitcoin breaks US$100 Billion in value, soars to over US$6000 for the first time
Bitcoin, which is unarguably the world’s most prominent digital currency, just broke through one of the most important milestones ever, vaulting to over US$6000 and over US$100 billion in value. Welcome to a new kind of currency, or rather, welcome to a new kind of financial system. Today, for the first time ever, Bitcoin surpassed the $6000 barrier, proving that cryptocurrency is, in all likeliness, here to stay. Bitfinex, which has the highest volume BTC/USD exchange, broke the $6,000 barrier initially. Now, the same can be said for all of the other major exchanges. It has only been a little over a week since the price of bitcoin soared passed […]
Blockchain gains traction in fintech as payment networks emerge
J.P. Morgan has created what is arguably one of the largest blockchain payments networks to date. The financial services company announced that the Royal Bank of Canada and Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. are the first two banks to join the blockchain network, “representing significant cross-border payment volumes.” J.P. Morgan created the Interbank Information Network (IIN), which it said will significantly reduce the number of participants needed to respond to compliance and other data-related inquiries that delay payments. “IIN will enhance the client experience, decreasing the amount of time – from weeks to hours – and costs associated with resolving payment delays,” said Emma Loftus, Head of Global […]
Backing local talent to build the Australian FinTech sector
New scholarship announced to grow future FinTech leaders FinTech may be the talk of the town, but it’s nothing if it doesn’t move forward. To ensure the industry keeps innovating, and to give back to the country supporting their battle against the ‘big dogs’ of the FinTech world, Nifty Personal Loans (Nifty) has launched a scholarship program. To pave the way for the business and finance leaders of tomorrow, Nifty has announced that they will be giving one Bachelor or Masters Business, Finance or IT student a helping hand in the form of a $2500 lump sum each semester which can be used for university fees, resources and technology, research materials […]
