Australian fintech success Optal seeks new global investor
Forget Prospa, SocietyOne and the like; a new fintech has popped on to dealmakers’ radars and it is one with more than a decade’s history and a significant amount of earnings. Street Talk understands there is at least a stake up for grabs in Australian-based but globally focused business to business payments company Optal Ltd, which is the liquidity event some of its early backers have been waiting for. Optal CEO Rob Bishop and his team have hired a boutique adviser in the United States, FT, to market the stake to potentially interested parties and set up a sale process. Optal is known in fintech and payments circles worldwide, and has had no shortage […]
Australia’s mobile wallet Beem It eschews new fast-payments platform in favor of debit rails
Beem It, a startup owned by three of Australia’s largest banks, has launched a free real-time social payments app designed to run on older debit networks instead of the country’s new faster payments platform. Market research commissioned by Beem It indicates that, because of unpaid small debts between friends, Australia’s national unpaid “mate” debt is worth A$6.2 billion. To get around the embarrassment of asking a friend for repayment, Beem It offers the ability to request money through an app. Rather than use the New Payments Platform (NPP), Australia’s faster payments system, Beem It links to users’ debit cards as a means of achieving scale. “There are about 43 million […]
Link4 and Squirrel Street merge to offer full e-Invoicing service
Link4 Australia and Squirrel Street have officially merged to provide a full e-Invoicing service for small and medium businesses. During a recent London Tech Week event, Link4 Australia and Squirrel Street announced the successful merger of their respective companies. The amalgamation of both organisations provides full e-Invoicing services to small, medium and micro businesses, and brings their combined customer base to 72,500 users across Australia and New Zealand. Having previously partnered with one another to provide Link4 users with a seamless way to process PDF invoices, both companies felt there was an organic synergy during this collaboration making a merger a clear and obvious next step. “e-Invoicing is the […]
SendGold signs major platform deal for Gold-as-a-Service
Sydney-based SendGold have digitised gold to enable their customer network to buy, sell, and exchange gold instantly as peer-to-peer money across 8 countries in the Asia-Pac region. Now the company have announced they have signed an agreement to enter the rewards market with the world’s largest cloud-based loyalty platform. Toronto-based Global Rewards Solutions (GRS) provide a loyalty platform that is used by millions of members globally, including employees of a number of Fortune 500 companies. The deal announced with SendGold will let their loyalty program members instantly exchange their points for gold bullion directly inside the GRS application. The capability went live in Australia this week and a phased rollout […]
Macquarie slips $20m into Stocard’s mobile wallet
Mobile wallet firm Stocard has landed $20 million from Macquarie Capital, with follow-on financing from original investors Shortcut, Alstin, Rocketship, HTGF and Engelhorn. Stocard co-founder and chief executive Bjorn Goss said the company would use the funds to launch a mobile payment functionality, recruit 40 employees across engineering, sales and marketing, and expand into new markets starting with the opening of its Paris office this week, then Toronto in the coming weeks. “It’s no longer a question that wallets will go mobile; the question is around how to execute the transition with the consumer’s best experience in mind,” he said. “Digital will reshape the shopping process and experience, as mobile […]
Gobbill inks deal with iSignthis for card processing and eKYC
Australian Securities Exchange and Frankfurt Stock Exchange cross listed iSignthis Ltd (ASX:ISX/FRA:TA8), the world leading RegTech for identity verification and payment services, is pleased to announce that it has signed an agreement with an artificial intelligence (AI) fintech bill payment automation startup called Gobbill™. iSignthis is supporting innovative companies like Gobbill by providing global identity verification and payment solutions. The partnership with iSignthis supports Gobbill’s international expansion plans utilising their identity verification services and transactional banking facilities to clear payments. “Partnering with iSignthis is a strategic and important milestone for Gobbill. It enables our customers to pay any bill for billers that do not accept card payments or various card […]
Verrency boosts commercial offering signing ten strategic Fintech partners
Australian global payments provider Verrency has signed ten strategic FinTech partners in just six weeks as it continues to gain global traction. Founded in 2016, Verrency enables banks to cost-effectively deliver the latest value-added payment capabilities and curated FinTech services – via V+, their FinTech marketplace – to their customers without replacing or heavily modifying their existing payments infrastructure. As part of the recently signed partnership agreements, Verrency enables these signed partners to easily distribute their services to global financial institutions via Verrency’s API platform. Some of Verrency’s newly signed FinTech partners include: UK-based ComplyAdvantage, which provides real-time screening and monitoring technology powered by artificial intelligence to help companies comply […]
Cryptocurrency is a new ‘coin of the realm’ for loyalty programs
Rene Konrad earns bonus miles from four airlines, plus loyalty points from six retailers and credit cards. But the one loyalty program he is most excited about now offers him something different: digital coins. Before he jumps on the train to Zurich most mornings, Konrad grabs a bottle of Caffe Lattesso. The 41-year-old can get about 12 Lattessocoins by entering a code from the bottle into a website. In a few months, the accumulated coins – which only became available in April – should become tradeable for other digital tokens, as well as cash. “I don’t know how many airline miles I lost because I didn’t use them fast enough,” […]
