It’s Apple Pay day for ING Direct
ING Direct signed up more than 20,000 customers to Apple Pay within 24 hours of going live with the digital wallet, claiming banks must partner and embrace a broader digital “ecosystem” or risk falling by the wayside. After going live with Apple Pay on Tuesday morning, ING chief Uday Sareen yesterday said 21,500 customers had activated the payments functionality on their iPhones, surpassing expectations of about 10,000. He said the bank’s account acquisition numbers were 25 per cent higher on Tuesday than the rolling average of the prior 30 days. ING has 517,000 customers who could activate Apple Pay, but only about 70 per cent use iPhones and only the […]
Dart aims for a United States of Fintech
Australian tech entrepreneurs have launched a new digital home for the global fintech community, providing an agnostic platform that founders hope will one day become the seat for an inclusive and encyclopaedic fintech commonwealth. Founder and CEO, Cameron Dart, told AB+F that the International FinTech platform, combines a web portal and directory to meet growing demand from the global community to have a dedicated, online and natively fintech presence for a sector that transcends borders. “We like to think of it as the beginnings of a LinkedIn for fintech,” Dart said. This week’s launch, built on the back of the original Australian FinTech, already encompasses more than 1,000 global fintech companies […]
Fintech start-up PromisePay becomes Assembly Payments, signs key Gumtree deal
Well-backed Melbourne-based fintech start-up PromisePay has taken the bold move to change its name at the same time as announcing one of its most important deals to date, with eBay-owned online marketplace Gumtree. The company, which last year closed a $14 million Series A funding round with Australian tech VC fund rampersand, Westpac’s Reinventure, 99Designs co-founder Mark Harbottle and former Hitwise CEO Andrew Walsh, will now be known as Assembly Payments. PromisePay had already picked up a strong roster of more than 100 Australian and international clients including Airtasker, hipages, Flippa and Carsales.com.au for its online marketplace payments platform. It enables payments to be held in escrow, so a customer […]
Banks stake out Apple Pay battleground in ACCC submission
The concept of the big banks arguing for change in order to increase competition tells you something about Apple’s apparent domination of the mobile phone market and its willingness to exploit this market power. In a submission released today, the banks have responded to the ACCC’s draft denial of the right to collectively negotiate with Apple by dropping their proposed claim to seek the right to fight for the ability to pass on the Apple fee and to cut the period for authorisation in half to 18 months. The latter is designed to show the big banks are not just simply trying to delay Apple and the former is to […]
Fintech disruptors hurting established players
As trends go, financial technology is a beauty. The prospect of nimble “fintech” ventures disrupting financial-service incumbents has whet investor appetites. An Australian fintech sector is rapidly emerging. Fintech has been a boom sector in the United States and United Kingdom as technology-based companies, with their capital-light business models, nibble at the market share of large firms. It happened in print media, publishing, music and education. Now the same trend, where new firms offer financial products and services using online platforms, is disrupting parts of banking, wealth management, insurance, payments, accounting and foreign exchange. There is, of course, much hype about fintech. But the financial-services sector looks a prime target […]
Apple Pay boss says CBA, NAB, Westpac risk missing the future of payments
The global head of Apple Pay has put three of Australia’s big banks on notice that the technology giant’s global payments system will steal their customers and they risk being left behind in the development of digital wallets. Jennifer Bailey said in an exclusive interview that Apple is so confident of the supremacy of its payments system that “customers will say they are happy to switch banks to use it”. With ANZ Banking Group the only big four bank to allow its customers to use Apple Pay, The Australian Financial Review can reveal that Macquarie Bank and ING Direct will turn on the service by the end of February. They […]
Mint Payments successfully completes $6m placement
Payments technology solutions provider Mint Payments (ASX: MNW) has successfully completed a placement of new shares to drive its aggressive expansion into South East Asia’s evolving payments landscape. The placement will be made pursuant to s708 (11) of the Corporations Act 2001, to raise $6.0M. Priced at $0.079 per share, the Placement represents a 3.7% discount to the last traded price of $0.082 per share. The capital raising will be undertaken in two tranches: a) Tranche 1 – comprising 50.6M shares, raising $4.0M pursuant to the Company’s existing 15% capital issue limit under ASX Listing Rule 7.1 ; and b) Tranche 2 – comprising 25.3M shares, raising $2.0M. […]
Australian FinTech launches International FinTech platform
The team behind the highly successful AustralianFinTech.com.au, this week launch their International platform, InternationalFinTech.com, aimed at connecting the FinTech industry on a global scale. Founder and CEO, Cameron Dart, says International FinTech has been born on the back of the highly successful Australian FinTech platform and growing demand from the global community to have a dedicated online presence for their sector. “International FinTech mirrors the Australian FinTech platform, including a dedicated industry newsfeed and a comprehensive directory of FinTech companies globally. “The site also aims to educate users of new financial technologies such as peer to peer lending and cryptocurrency, all presented in simple terms with no financial jargon” says […]
