Australian FinTech marketplace Valiant announces capital raise
Valiant, member of fintech hub Stone & Chalk announced today that the company has completed their seed round capital raising subscription. The $800,000 capital raise was led by fintech venture capital firm Reinventure, supported by H2 Ventures and a selection of prominent angel investors including Mitchel Harad and Vincent Turner. Co-Founders Alex Molloy and Richard Cotton launched the Valiant business loan marketplace in November 2015, with the aim to minimise the angst associated with sourcing, comparing, and securing business loans. Valiant partners with over 26 lenders from across the lending spectrum with more lenders being added monthly. Alex Molloy: “We built the Valiant marketplace to solve a very particular need. Until now, it has been difficult for time poor business owners to quickly […]
Brisbane Is Playing Host To Australia’s First Cashless Cafe
Do you use your credit card or your phone to pay for your morning coffee, or are you still holding on to that pocketful of coins? Sydney-based coffee roastery and cafe chain Pablo & Rusty’s is opening Australia’s first cashless cafe in Brisbane, ditching the notes and coins in favour of credit cards, phone-based payments and even smart coffee cups. With a number of successful locations already opened across Sydney (which do indeed take cash), Pablo & Rusty’s was planning the opening of their Brisbane store when they had the idea to make it entirely cashless. “We were just thinking through some of the logistics of how to manage cash […]
Sydney FinTech Valiant announces major partnership with Vow Financial
Valiant, member of FINTECH incubator Stone & Chalk will announce today an official partnership with the Yellow Brick Road Group (Yellow Brick Road and Vow Financial) at the Commercial Conference at The Sheraton Mirage Gold Coast. The partnership grants the Group exclusive partnership access to Valiant’s business loan marketplace platform and its range of non-bank small business lending solutions. Immediately, the Valiant marketplace solves the broker network’s concerns with sourcing, comparing, and securing funding for traditionally hard to finance SMB customers. Alex Molloy, Managing Director of Valiant: “The challenge for brokers is that serving customers in the short term funding space takes an unbalanced amount of time – and for hard to fund customers, […]
Australian FinTech Company Profile – RateSetter
COMPANY: RateSetter FINTECH SECTOR: Peer-to-Peer Lending WEBSITE: www.RateSetter.com.au CONTACT: [email protected] PHONE: 1300 768 710 FOUNDED: 2012 FOUNDER(S) / CEO: Daniel Foggo – CEO DESCRIPTION: RateSetter provide a transparent peer-to-peer marketplace where lenders and borrowers, empowered by technology, can transact together and share the benefits. KEY STATISTICS: Value of loans Funded: $43,807,549 Number of Loans facilitated: 2,578 Average Loan Value: $16,993 Average Loan Term: 38 months Average Borrower Age: 39 Average Borrower Income: $90,513 Male – Female: 69% – 31% Number of People registered: 61,215 Applications under consideration: $4,186,959 Enquiries in past 30 days: […]
The Invoice Market appoints Head of National Sales and Referral Partnerships
Peer-to-peer alternative financier The Invoice Market (tim) has strengthened its senior executive team with the strategic appointment of Bernie Kelly as Head of National Sales and Referral Partnerships. Kelly comes to tim with an impressive track record of establishing financial services businesses and designing financial product solutions around the globe. Most recently he was Managing Director, International Operations for PolicyLink. In this position, Kelly grew the business, captured significant market share, and successfully negotiated exclusive strategic alliances with international asset managers, investment banks and global life companies. In commenting on the appointment, tim CEO, Angus Sedgwick said “I’ve known and worked with Bernie over the past 25 years. […]
ASIC to build fintech start-ups a ‘regulatory sandbox’ to test ideas
The corporate regulator will allow fintech start-ups to test their ideas with real customers for a period of six months without having to hold a financial services licence, under a new “regulatory sandbox” proposed by Treasurer Scott Morrison in the May budget. In a consultation paper released on Wednesday morning, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission said the creation of the sandbox will allow financial services start-ups to attract investment and get to market faster by providing “limited testing and concept validation to occur without businesses needing to comply with all the usual regulatory obligations”. The sandbox was proposed by the federal government as part of its plan to create […]
The ten year gap in financial services technology
In my estimation, technology in traditional financial services lag other industries by about a decade. Having trouble remembering what your online life was like in 2006? Here’s a benchmark: Facebook, Twitter, and the iPhone are each more than 10 years old. Sure, the word fintech has been all the rage the past couple of years, but it’s not a good sign when the word “tech” is wrenched into a moniker to explain what the companies involved actually do. We don’t refer to Uber as “taxitech,” just like we don’t think of Airbnb as “hoteltech.” It just works. It’s how we live. I’m not sure who coined the term fintech, but I can confidently say it’s been popularised […]
Aussie FinTech Octet goes global with new partner in China
Octet, a global financial technology company, has welcomed Asiafactor (CN) Limited as the latest licensee of the Octet platform. A successful Chinese supply chain finance organisation, Asiafactor will leverage Octet’s revolutionary supply chain management and financing platform to enable its customers to manage and pay international suppliers, saving time and freeing up their cashflow. Asiafactor will offer the Octet-enabled platform to serve both existing domestic small to medium enterprises, as well as to a vast range of prospective exporters throughout China. Customers leveraging the platform will be able to use their existing credit cards or other financing facilities to pay global suppliers at competitive exchange rates, removing the need for […]
