New Pelikin app fits the bill for globetrotting millennials
Digital banking start-up Pelikin aims to reshape the way people save, send and spend their money in Australia and while travelling abroad. The company’s slogan is “spend like a local”. It will be targeting “digital natives” with its app and debit card. It hopes to launch by mid-2018 and is currently seeking expressions of interest for investment on Birchal, an Australian equity crowdfunding platform. “Acting as a transactional base for funds, Pelikin wants to create a seamless digital experience between everyday banking and travel banking; an important element for a younger market who are known for their tech-savvy and globetrotting lifestyle,” the company explains. It is currently beta testing features […]
Westpac strikes deal with Assembly Payments
Westpac Banking Corp has bought an equity stake in Assembly Payments and will work with the Melbourne-based fintech to integrate the bank’s merchant terminals with customers’ point-of-sale (POS) software, removing the need for transaction amounts to be entered into retailers’ systems twice. For workers in the nation’s restaurants and coffee shops, entering the dollar amount of a transaction into a banking terminal to complete a sale might be a small frustration, but the extra process can add up to real dollars for business owners. Westpac estimates that for a typical Sydney CBD cafe – which completes between 1000 and 1500 transactions a day – the three to five seconds of […]
On The Money: Google Pay, Samsung Pay and Apple Pay explained
Over the last ten years, smartphones have replaced MP3 players, PDAs, cameras and – for some – even dedicated portable computing devices like laptops. Now, smartphone and wearable vendors are trying to replace your wallet by cementing themselves as a crucial part of the mobile payments space. If you’re confused about things like Apple Pay and Samsung Pay – here’s everything you need to know. What are mobile payments services? Mobile Payment services (also known as mobile payment platforms or digital wallets) is a term that refers services or apps that allow you to pay for things with your phone or smartwatch (via a connected credit or debit card). The […]
‘I’m not a silly investor’: SMEs accepting cryptocurrency as payment
When Robert Tadros was asked by a client last year if he would accept cryptocurrency as payment, he was “quite taken aback”. Being a believer in blockchain technology and a crypto-investor himself, the founder of search and social agency Impress!ve Digital was open to the request. “It’s an online store that the client operates. He was paying for his stock in cryptocurrency. So I embraced the idea.” Cryptocurrency client base increases In 12 months, Impress!ve, has grown 500 per cent from $600,000 to $3.5 million in annual revenue. Tadros attributes this growth to pivoting from a being a generalist agency to specialising in SEO, SEM and Facebook advertising. Three of […]
Sydney Angels funds QPay $570k to steal millennial students from banks
Australia’s first ever student marketplace app, QPay, has raised $570,000 from a series of high profile investors, including Sydney Angels and the Sydney Angels Sidecar Fund 2, to break into student banking through the release of a student-targeted QPay MasterCard. QPay aims to use the QPay MasterCard to capture the largest cluster of millennial consumers at the point when they’re most likely to begin making serious financial decisions – when enrolled in tertiary education. “University is the time when life decisions start to become quite future-focussed, especially regarding our finances,” said Andrew Clapham, Co-Founder of QPay. “We might be weighing up the amount of student debt we can responsibly accrue, […]
Peppermint to access over 1m Filipinos in tech deal
ASX listed fintech, Peppermint Innovation, has signed a potentially transformational service provider agreement with the largest cooperative federation in the Philippines. The deal brings more than one million potential Filipino customers into play for the Perth based financial payments APP provider. In a recent market update, Peppermint said it will develop a mobile financial services app and web tool for “MASS-SPECC”, the oldest cooperative federation in the Philippines, encompassing more than 300 affiliated cooperatives and one million individual members. MASS-SPECC is shorthand for the Mindanao Alliance of Self-Help Societies -Southern Philippines Educational Cooperative Centre, Peppermint said the app, to be known as the ‘Peppermint Conditional Cash Transfer Management System’, will […]
Samsung Pay locks up the “big four” after new partnership with National Australia Bank
Samsung Pay has become the first mobile wallet provider to lock up the “big four” banks after today announcing a partnership with the last of the major institutions – the National Australian Bank. NAB customers now join those from Commonwealth Bank, Westpac and ANZ to use Samsung Pay to make payments with compatible Samsung smartphones, Samsung smartwatches and other wearables. Customers can load their Visa credit and/or debit card and pay securely anywhere credit cards are accepted. Apart from the big four banks, Samsung Pay works with more than 45 other financial institutions around Australia. Samsung has made good on its promise to provide its customers with a simple and […]
Blockchain: A catalyst for new business models
The concept of blockchain technology is all but synonymous with cryptocurrency. It’s through pioneers such as bitcoin that everyday consumers have come to recognise this revolutionary and instantaneous mechanism for executing and recording financial transactions. But in business, curiosity is turning into innovation and experimentation. The use of blockchain to complete financial transactions is one of the more rudimentary applications of this technology. Blockchain means we now have a way to handle information without relying on a single trusted ledger, such as banks in the context of cryptocurrencies. Across all industries, how we verify, audit, enter, record, and update data has been left to a patchwork of different technologies and […]
