Australians are embracing fintech as they move away from traditional payment solutions: Research
Australian appetite for fintech services is on the up, with non-bank contactless or card-less mobile payment solutions now being used more than bank-owned payment solutions, according to recent research from market research company Roy Morgan. The Roy Morgan Digital Payment Solutions Currency Report, which is based on more than 50,000 consumer interviews, suggests fintechs, including startups, are taking market share from incumbents, albeit slowly. While 6.4% of people interviewed said they had used bank-owned digital payment solutions within the past 12 months, 6.5% had used non-bank solutions such as Apple Pay or Google Wallet. Further, 6% said they had used pay-later startup Afterpay within the past year. Some 94% of Australians said […]
OnMarket celebrates significant milestone: 100 transactions in 1,000 days
Digital investing platform OnMarket BookBuilds has recently completed their 100th transaction. OnMarket launched its B2C platform in October 2015, approximately 1,000 days ago. OnMarket, which is now approaching 50,000 members, provides retail investors with access to over one third of all IPOs on the ASX. OnMarket also offers equity crowdfunding after being granted an equity crowdfunding licence by ASIC in January this year, enabling its members access to innovative early stage and growth stage companies. OnMarket has raised over $65.7 million across the 100 transactions it has successfully completed. OnMarket CEO Ben Bucknell stated “Never before have Australians had access to investing into early stage companies and IPO companies like […]
FinTech Australia discovers Uber trick won’t work on the Big Four banks
Uber rose to prominence and captured market share with a pugnacious style that revolved around flouting laws and picking fights. But financial services is not ride-hailing. And it seems lobbying on behalf of the local fintech start-up scene carried very different expectations to lobbying on behalf of an aggressive, global, multinational disrupter. Uber’s former director of public policy and government in Australia, Brad Kitschke, has only spent four months as CEO of FinTech Australia. At a meeting of its board last Thursday, he tendered his resignation, citing his health. While the whole fintech scene would obviously wish him a speedy recovery, Kitschke’s departure from the high-pressure role is also being […]
CSIRO and the University of Sydney’s Red Belly Blockchain breaks new ground for speed
The University of Sydney and CSIRO’s Data61 say they have successfully created a blockchain that can process a mass amount of transactions significantly more quickly than public blockchains, such as the one behind bitcoin. New trials of the Red Belly Blockchain run on Amazon Web Services infrastructure have shown an average transaction delay of only three seconds and a throughput of 30,000 transactions per second. In comparison, bitcoin processes only three to seven transactions per second and as of August had an average confirmation time for a transaction of 10-30 minutes (during peak trading periods in January this has reached as high as almost 3000 minutes per transaction), according to […]
CBA joins regtech group to improve compliance
CBA’s head of governance and assurance, Jasper Poos, will join the board of the RegTech Association, a one-year old industry association.
When ‘it’ happens, SocietyOne urges us not to reach for the credit card
Australia’s pioneering and leading marketplace lender, SocietyOne, has launched an integrated marketing campaign to capitalize on the fast-approaching holiday season, where demand for consumer credit typically jumps with increased expenditure on festivities and gifts. The campaign, entitled “When ‘it’ happens”, highlights how even positive situations can put financial strain on even the most savvy Australians. It tells the story of ‘regular guy’, Dave, who is financially in control until a series of unexpected events blows his budget out of the water. SocietyOne saves the day by rewarding Dave’s good credit rating with a low-rate personal loan, saving him from resorting to a credit card – which can often become a […]
Open banking: risk and opportunity
The imminent open banking scheme presents huge opportunities for Australian FinTechs, but comes with some very real risks, SocietyOne chief executive Mark Jones said. The peer-to-peer lender recently hit $500 million in lending, a record for an Australian company, and with open banking, a comprehensive credit reporting scheme and the Royal Commission driving customers away from the big banks, the future looks bright for the local FinTech sector. The open banking scheme starts from July next year, with the big four banks required to provide customer data on request to data recipients – largely FinTech companies such as SocietyOne, but also between each other. While this provides big opportunities to […]
Are Exchange-Traded Fund flows creating the mother of all opportunities?
A common excuse given by fee-charging active fund managers that have battled to beat their benchmarks has been the ever-rising popularity of exchange-traded funds. ETFs effectively allow investors to track an index – anything from the S&P 500 to obesity-related stocks – by simply buying a listed security tacking the index or a basket of stocks. The global market has grown from 580 products totalling $US728 billion of assets to more than 5000 funds with more than $US5.6 trillion of assets. But some have argued that this created multibillion-dollar flows of brainless money simply buying and selling stocks based on predetermined rules rather than any thoughtful analysis. This, it has […]
