Acorns to launch its own superannuation product
The micro-investment app’s new super product, Acorns Grow Australia Super, will be available from March. Micro-investment platform Acorns has today announced it will launch its own super product to sit within its existing app. The Acorns app is popular with Australians, particularly millennials, for its simple approach to investing by rounding up everyday transactions and adding the loose change into an investment portfolio on their behalf. The super product, Acorns Grow Australia Super, will follow in the same footsteps aiming to simplify superannuation. Managing director of Acorns George Lucas said the new super product, like the existing investment product, has been built with young Australians in mind. “We see younger […]
Lord Mayor of London praises Australia’s “flourishing” fintech scene, plugs support for new ‘bridge’
In a rare visit to Australia last week, the Lord Mayor of London, Alderman Charles Bowman, expressed his full support for the upcoming fintech ‘bridge’ between Australia and UK and praised the local fintech scene as being almost on par with renowned fintech hub London. Speaking to a packed room at co-working and tech startup space York Butter Factory in Melbourne on February 15, Bowman discussed how Australia is the UK’s fifth largest trade partner, but there was always room to explore new channels of trade. Bowman and his cohort were in Australia in the wake of Britain’s controversial Brexit vote to explore new partnerships and strengthen existing ones. Some […]
Digital bank startup Xinja can now offer housing loans, and getting one will take ‘about 20 minutes’
Digital bank startup Xinja is planning to offer home loans soon after winning an Australian Credit Licence from ASIC (Australian Securities and Investments Commission). It’s an important step forward for Xinja which is raising money under new equity crowdfunding legislation and aims to become a full-service digital bank built in Australia but without the legacy structures and costs associated with more traditional financial services companies. “This allows use to give mortgages, to lend and give credit,” Xinja chief executive Eric Wilson told Business Insider. “We are raising our very first mortgages in late March early April. By May-June we will bring our first fully digital product online. “We are bringing […]
Verrency emphasizes commitment to Fintech partners with new partnership arm and leadership appointments
Australian global payments platform Verrency has appointed two experienced entrepreneurs and venture capitalists to drive its partnership strategy to ensure fintech partners and financial institutions get the best value from the API platform. Eddie Wilson and AJ Milne have been named to lead V+, the official partnership arm of Verrency. V+ is designed to leverage Verrency’s behind-the-scenes, enterprise-grade, curated-API platform to generate opportunities for payment-enabled Fintechs around the world. While Verrency has already begun signing up Fintech partners over the last few months, these appointments demonstrate Verrency’s clear commitment to bringing the best of Fintechs to financial institutions. Wilson has been immersed in the emerging business community for many years. […]
Anonymous Bitcoin investor buys $400 million worth of crypto
An anonymous cryptocurrency trader has snapped up $400 million worth of Bitcoin as the digital currency continues to recover the heavy losses experienced in 2018. Recorded on the blockchain, the unknown investor snapped up the inordinate purchase sometime between February 9 and 12. Because every transaction made in Bitcoin is recorded on a digital ledger known as “the blockchain”, no movement of money is invisible – but the parties who make the transactions are still unknown. It’s presumed the mysterious buyer was “buying the dip” by purchasing when Bitcoin was at a two-month low of between $US 8,689 and $US 8,070. Since the purchase, Bitcoin has shot up to its […]
Local cryptocurrency exchange gets certified
As investors and regulators around the world attempt to peer into the deep, dark jungle that is digital currency, one Australian exchange operator hopes it has found a way to shine a bit of light by becoming the first business of its kind to get industry certification. BTC Markets is the first Australian exchange to be certified by the Australian Digital Commerce Association, the industry body for the digital currency sector. The Melbourne-based cryptocurrency exchange demonstrated that “rigorous” standards were achieved in meeting the expectations of multiple Australian regulators, most notably AUSTRAC. Operators of Australian exchanges for Bitcoin and other digital currencies need to register with the country’s anti-money laundering […]
You can now study Blockchain at university
An Australian university is banking on Blockchain, the technology behind the lucrative yet volatile cryptocurrency industry, by launching a nation-first course in the emerging sector. Australia’s first short course on Blockchain strategy, aiming to educate the nation’s next wave of tech start-up entrepreneurs, will take flight on Tuesday at Melbourne’s RMIT University. “Blockchain is now becoming a core part of contemporary digital literacy,” Vice Chancellor Martin Bean said. The online eight-week program is set to begin in mid-March with students given the chance to hear from global experts in the growing space. Blockchain is a decentralised, shared ledger that – with the help of complicated cryptography – records transactions in […]
Crowdfund laws frozen in time
Much-anticipated reforms extending equity crowdfunding to private companies have yet to move through the Parliament, nearly six months after the bills were first introduced. The Corporations Amendment (Crowd-sourced Funding for Proprietary Companies) Bill 2017 would let private companies undertake an equity crowdfunding round without first converting into an unlisted public company. The bill was introduced to the House last September last year and the first and second readings were quickly completed. But it has not been raised again, with no debate or third reading in the six months since. Adding the six month assent period after the bill is passed, equity crowdfunding won’t be available to local startups until September […]
