Mortgage Choice joins forces with leading online lender Prospa
In a bid to better cater to the growing commercial needs of its customers, Mortgage Choice has added Australia’s leading online lender, Prospa, to its panel. “We are very excited to announce that we have partnered with Prospa to help us deliver a broader range of commercial lending and cash flow financing solutions to our customers,” said Mortgage Choice’s general manager of product Emma Dupont-Brown (pictured above with Prospa’s Matt Bauld). “Prospa is the leader in online small business lending, utilising their smart proprietary technology platform to quickly assess online applications for unsecured loans up to $250,000. “A significant proportion of our customers are small business owners who have very specific commercial […]
Data deluge as fintech wave builds
Fintech is here and is going to grow quickly, so businesses need to get up to speed. Those who thought the internet had done all it could to disrupt business need to think again, because a new wave of disruption is about to break as the fintech revolution gathers pace. A new word for some people, fintech (or financial technology) has made it into the Oxford Dictionary. Defined as ‘technologies that support banking’, the word itself may not be in common use, but there’s no doubt everyone is already affected by it in some way. More important than what has happened in the early years of fintech, which has its […]
Banks pay lip service to fintech collaboration
Banks need to become “platforms” that deliver financial services alongside various start-up partners, but many banks are paying lip service to collaboration and remain reluctant to engage with the local fintech ecosystem, according to Alex Scandurra, chief executive of fintech hub Stone & Chalk. The notion that a bank can merely innovate internally “is such outdated thinking,” he told the 1300 delegates to the Reimagination’16 summit in Sydney on Thursday. Banks needed to shift from thinking they sell a mortgage, deposit or loan to being “a platform of services [that] deliver a whole range of things to customers, some of which are built and delivered by [the bank], some of […]
Apple Pay helps banks sell mortgages and deposits, ANZ Bank says
ANZ Bank chief Shayne Elliott insists his move to break ranks with rivals and do a deal with Apple to allow easy payments on the iPhone is helping the lender sell a wide range of financial products, even mortgages. A day after his key rivals suffered a major setback in their brawl with Apple, Mr Elliott on Wednesday stood by ANZ’s move to work with the US technology giant, which is moving into the bank-dominated payments market. Westpac, Commonwealth Bank, National Australia Bank and Bendigo and Adelaide Bank want to launch a collective boycott of Apple Pay, which requires banks to surrender revenue in order to access the iPhone’s chip […]
StartupAUS’s Crossroads report reveals 14-point plan to transform economy
Two-and-a-half years ago, StartupAUS declared that Australia was at a crossroads. We released our first report, bearing the Crossroads name, and called for a future that embraced technology start-ups and innovation. Today we released the third report in that series. You can find it online at www.startupaus.org/crossroads/. The question in 2016 isn’t which path to go down, but how far and how fast we are prepared to travel. In the last 18 months, we’ve seen encouraging progress across all areas of the nation’s start-up ecosystem. Right from inception, start-ups are better equipped to find a home. Hubs for specific start-ups such as SproutX (agtech) and Stone and Chalk (fintech) have […]
Australian software startup Businest wins Global Award for Small Business App
Accountex (formerly SleeterCon) announced businest® as the winner of The Small Business App You Should Be Using at their annual accounting technology conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. The award sponsored by Accountex, the leading independent accounting technology expo and conference in the world, was presented to businest® founder Rhondalynn Korolak, on stage in front of more than 1,000 attendees. Each year more than 150 new apps are added to the small business, cloud accounting ecosystem. The Meridian Awards, created by Accountex, are presented to a prestigious few apps in the accounting technology space who have displayed excellence beyond their peers in a given award category. There are only 4 awards […]
Samsung Pay on Gear S2, S3 sparks smartwatch pay war with Apple
Samsung has joined Apple in offering users the ability to pay by flashing their smartwatch across a retail terminal. Customers who buy Samsung’s new Gear S3 smartwatch or who own last year’s Gear S2 model will be able to pay at shops with the flick of a wrist. Samsung users already can use Samsung Pay with recently released Samsung smartphones, but today’s announcement extends this to smartwatches as well. An ability to make payments from a Gear S2 and S3 watch with Samsung Pay will give Australians yet another layer of convenience when shopping and will let them make payments quickly and easily, says Richard Fink, Head of IT and […]
How UBank’s FinTech culture enables Agile to thrive
Some organisational cultures can find it difficult to adapt to an Agile mindset. Central to adopting an Agile approach is emphasising visibility and transparency. This includes making everything (including bad news) visible across the entire organisation. It also means prioritising face-to-face communication. Finally, open team reflection is critical to identifying where things went wrong and how they should improve. One organisation that has done this successfully is online bank, UBank. Bulletproof was engaged by UBank in July to provide Agile coaching for ten weeks across four product teams in its digital division. The bank – which says it operates more like FinTech with a banking licence – wanted to improve […]
