DriveWealth partners with Verrency to offer consumers access to a new savings and investing strategy
Digital brokerage solution provider DriveWealth has joined forces with Australian global payments innovator Verrency. The partnership will enable DriveWealth to deliver its ground-breaking fractional share investment platform to a new segment of consumers. As a result of the agreement between the two companies signed today at Money20/20 in Las Vegas, shoppers who have a debit or credit card will have the opportunity to seamlessly invest in companies from which they purchase goods and services. For example, if you buy shoes from the Nike store, you can elect to round up or put a percentage of the purchase price towards buying shares, or a fraction of a share, in the company. […]
Irish FinTech company PerfectCard confirms its sale to Australia’s EML for €6m
Irish FinTech company PerfectCard has been sold to Australian payment solutions provider EML Payments in a €6m (A$9.5m) deal. PerfectCard provides incentive and corporate expense solutions including PerfectIncentive and the recently-launched Pecan Expense. The acquisition will result in the expansion of PerfectCard in Ireland, with plans to increase the number of full-time employees over the next few years, the company said. Under the deal EML has acquired 75pc of PerfectCard, having received Central Bank approval for the transaction in the past two weeks. Commenting on the announcement, Nikki Evans, CEO of PerfectCard, described it as an important move for both companies. “It allows EML to self-issue regulated payment products across […]
Westpac launches ‘designer’ wearable payments accessories
The bank has made payment-enabled keychains, silicon tags, and some pins available, but there’s still no sign of Apple Pay. Westpac has announced the availability of “Centsitive Objects” on Wednesday, touted by the bank as a range of “designer” wearable payment-enabled accessories. Instead of just plugging into devices manufactured by others, Westpac launched its own range of wearable, hands-free, and battery-free payment accessories in October. The new range designed by Sydney-based entrepreneur Hayden Cox builds on the bank’s PayWear wearable payments play. According to Cox, his designs are ideally shaped for customers that want a payments device with a “little more flavour”. “Our customers are increasingly on-the-go with more than […]
Cross-border payments set for ‘unprecedented change’
The cross-border payments industry is seeing levels of “unprecedented change” globally, including in regulation, where Australia is struggling to keep apace despite the competition watchdog’s probe into the $9 billion foreign currency transaction market. That’s the view of OFX chief executive Skander Malcolm who identifies three themes dominating cross-border payment, including that a larger number of small and medium businesses are utilising global payments to tap into new customers or for their supply chain, and that rapid technological change is spawning a rash of new products and services. He says the third trend is a higher level of regulatory scrutiny and change that is facilitating new models, an area where […]
New ‘sandbox’ to help fintechs compete for real-time payments
Start-ups seeking to develop services for the new, real-time payments system will be able to test their capabilities via a new “sandbox” created by its governing body NPP Australia and Swift, the network of global banks that helped build the infrastructure. The new test environment – which will allow connections with the “new payments platform” (NPP) via “application programming interfaces” (APIs) – comes after criticism from the Productivity Commission in August that access to the big bank-built system is inadequate. To encourage more competition, NPP Australia introduced a new “NPP API Framework” earlier this month. Its CEO, Adrian Lovney, said the NPP has been designed to be inclusive and “open […]
Verrency accelerates global expansion as the first FinTech to be selected into Plug and Play Fintech programs in three different countries
Verrency have announced expansion into Germany and another selection into Plug and Play’s prestigious Fintech Program. Verrency has been selected for Plug and Play’s accelerator programs in the Silicon Valley, Singapore and now in Frankfurt, Germany as the company extends its global reach in the FinTech market. Thousands of start-up companies apply to Plug and Play’s accelerator programs each year before being thoroughly reviewed by Plug and Play executives and their corporate Financial Institution partners. Only a handful get the opportunity to participate in the accelerator. Verrency has passed this test three times in three different countries. “It is wonderful to see Verrency thrive and it’s nice to have a […]
Gobbling up your bills one at a time: how startup Gobbill is automating bill payment through AI
So, here’s an idea: imagine a digital financial assistant powered by artificial intelligence that digitises your bills and schedule payments, all whilst checking for fraud. Pretty cool, right? That’s what Gobbill, a fintech startup that automates bill payments for small businesses and households does. But that’s not all. Shendon Ewans, CEO and Co-Founder of Gobbill, says, “You can link any Australian bank account, and it will debit that account, so you don’t have to tell every biller your bank account details. Essentially, the product allows you to centralise your direct debits in one place.” In addition, the ability to pay your bills in cryptocurrency will be coming soon thanks to […]
No more updating card details: Visa rolls out tokens online
New digital payments technology from Visa is set to significantly reduce ecommerce fraud, while removing a major consumer pain point – updating your details online every time you get a new card. The technology, called credential-on-file (COF) tokenisation, means that card details such as the 16-digit account numbers and expiry dates will no longer be stored online when consumers make a purchase. Instead, COF removes sensitive information from merchants’ systems and replaces it with a token, which is meaningless if stolen by fraudsters. Visa’s head of digital product and partnerships for Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific, Matt Wood, told The Australian Financial Review the tokens would be linked […]
