Moroku’s distribution deal aimed at small merchants overlooked by banks
As fintech niches like lending and payments rapidly become commoditised, the addition of value-added services is a prerequisite for survival. Local fintech Moroku’s distribution deal for its advanced point-of-sale software Marrakash is the latest example. Marrakash’s value for AEVI, a subsidiary of the world’s biggest ATM and POS supplier Diebold Nixdorf of Germany, is not so much vanilla payments as the software’s ability to integrate business, products, customers and payments systems into a single platform. It enables small to medium-sized businesses in the food and hospitality, retail and financial services industries to display a full product catalogue, create customer loyalty schemes and take secure card payments on the go. The […]
NAB makes play for digital wallets
National Australia Bank will soon announce the next stage of the digital wallet market by launching an Android Pay service. NAB is said to be close to quitting the consortium of banks that unsuccessfully pitched to the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission to collectively negotiate with Apple, forcing the tech giant to open up the iPhone’s near-field communication antenna to their own digital wallets. With the competition watchdog having determined that collective negotiations were likely to reduce or distort competition, the suggestion is that NAB, like ANZ, is ready to go its own way and do a deal with Apple. The truth is that NAB is edging closer to an […]
Inside the multibillion dollar battle for Millennials’ super
Something hilarious has been appearing in the Facebook feeds of thousands of millennial-aged Australians lately. In a video, “Clancy Overall” and “Errol Parker”, two characters from “Australia’s oldest newspaper” the satirical site The Betoota Advocate, talk up “some financial start-up from down south” that allows you to “grab your superannuation by the balls” and invest in things such as “greenie bullsh-t”. The company they were plugging, Grow Super, is the latest participant in the most fascinating battle unfolding in Australia’s $2.3 trillion retirement industry: the fight for control of the Millennial generation’s wealth. Its rivals include Spaceship, the tech-focused super product backed by a string of start-up luminaries including Atlassian’s […]
Bitcoin price crosses USD$3,000 milestone to set new all-time high
The price of bitcoin topped USD$3,000 for the first time in history today, according to the CoinDesk Bitcoin Price Index (BPI). After spending much of the last week seeking direction in the $2,700 to $2,900-range, the average price of bitcoin across major international exchanges edged up over this threshold finally at roughly 17:00 UTC. The new record comes at a time when alternative digital assets are seeing robust inflows, with ethereum’s ether token setting a new all-time high of more than USD$300 today as well. Indeed, analysts spoke to the ongoing broadening of the cryptocurrency market as a tide that is benefitting bitcoin. “The inflows into ‘alts’ are greater than […]
Robo-advice finds market in digital-savvy older investors
Hey robo-advisers … You’re looking the wrong way! Millennials have no spare money and don’t care about investing just yet — but older Australian investors are more than ready to play. One survey after another in the US shows older investors are actually super keen to examine low-cost digital-based financial services. And closer to home, it’s worth pointing out that a recent survey from the SMSF Association revealed a higher portion of Australia’s one million SMSF operators were willing to try robo-advice than the general public. No doubt this emerging reality has not been lost on the kingpins of Australian finance — the banks. Earlier this week, NAB funds management […]
Global startup crowdfunding platform OurCrowd expands to India, Australia
OurCrowd, an equity crowdfunding platform that allows investors to invest in private companies, announced that it was expanding into some of the world’s largest markets this week. The company formally announced the launch of strategic partnerships with Reliance Private Client, a major wealth management firm based in India, and the National Australia Bank. The partnerships allow clients of both firms to access venture capital funding from investors on the OurCrowd platform from around the world. OurCrowd’s goal with the expansions is to diversify the asset classes available to global investors, said CEO Jon Medved in a press release. Medved noted in the release that India alone saw its number of […]
What’s holding up the blockchain?
It’s not technology or regulation holding back the blockchain – software that stores and transfers value or data across the internet – we just haven’t figured out the next big use-case. Two reports released this week by the CSIRO’s Data61 not only inject some well-researched gravitas into the conversation, they also provide insight into why some of the major blockchain projects have stalled. Since 2015, banks, regulators, tech giants and startups all over the world have raised billions of dollars to explore the blockchain. But the only really successful, scaleable use of the blockchain remains cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. Bitcoins currently trade at almost AU$4,000, with a total market equivalent to […]
Open banking start-up Basiq snares funding from Westpac and NAB
The venture capital funds of Westpac Banking Corp and National Australia Bank have co-invested in Basiq, a start-up that scrapes financial data from bank webpages to help fintechs compete with incumbent banks. Taking advantages of the government’s moves to create an economy where data moves more openly, it plans to morph into a new banking platform that uses “application programming interfaces” (APIs, or software connecting computers) to improve customer experience of financial services. The seed investment by Reinventure Group, Westpac’s venture capital fund, and NAB Ventures comes after Treasurer Scott Morrison said in last month’s budget an “open banking” regime would be created, liberating customer banking data. The Productivity Commission, […]
