Cash costs Aussie SMBs big time
A national study, commissioned by payments company Square, has revealed that Australian small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are wasting an average of 216 hours (around 29 working days) each year counting and banking cash — that’s a minimum cost of $8.7 billion in annual wages for the SMB sector. Square’s research points to a growing attitude shift among the majority of Aussie SMBs (60%) who agree that the key motivator for transitioning to cashless is to reduce time waste for staff, in addition to customer preference and the security risks with storing cash on-site. Nathan Dalah, co-founder and managing director at Sydney-based Fishbowl, took his popular sashimi salad bar chain […]
Everything you missed at the Jacaranda Finance Drought Row-lief
Jacaranda Finance held their first ever charity fundraiser last Saturday the 8th of September. The Drought Row-lief row-a-thon was held at Science Fitness in South Brisbane and F45 Training Centre in Paddington. Each gym had a show of rowing machines going for 90 minutes and Founder and CEO of Jacaranda, Daniel Wessels, is now donating $40 for every kilometre that was rowed. With 10 rowing machines going on the day and a crowd of enthusiastic rowers, both gyms clocked 221 kilometres collectively. Originally Wessels was planning to donate $20 per kilometre. However, coming off a big win at the previous nights 2018 Young Entrepreneur Awards where we won the Professional […]
Xero State of Lending Report: Funding gap is stifling small business growth in Australia
Research unveiled today by Xero suggests Australia’s small businesses could borrow as much as $80 billion over the next 12 months, if they could get the funding. Instead, small businesses are struggling to access the capital they require, in large part due to the complexity of the loan process. This is creating a funding gap and holding back significant jobs and growth opportunities for the Australian economy. According to the Xero State of Lending Report, one in five small business owners (22%) say access to capital is the greatest pain point or perceived threat to their long-term growth aspirations, and a quarter of small business are not very confident in […]
Homeloans to fund and use Athena’s new home loan platform
Homeloans Ltd will provide debt funding to Athena Home Loans and has joined Macquarie and SquarePeg as a shareholder of the new home loan platform, which is preparing to launch later this year with technology to link mortgage borrowers directly with super funds and non-bank lenders. Athena, founded by two former National Australia Bank executives, is targeting $1 billion of lending in its first year, a drop in the ocean compared to the $1.7 trillion mortgage market. However, the strategic partnership announced by ASX-listed Homeloans on Monday morning shows major banks, which are grappling with a loss of customer trust due to the banking royal commission, are under growing pressure […]
Bendigo Adelaide launches “all-in-app” digital bank
Bendigo and Adelaide Bank has become the latest institution to launch a new pure play digital bank. Dubbed ‘Up’, the separately branded neo play will come in the form of a dedicated and separately branded app, as Bendigo attempts to snatch younger customers disillusioned with the offerings of the Big Four. Australia’s fifth largest retail institution claims the the new mobile-centric service, now in beta, will be Australia’s first fully licenced “all-in-app” mobile banking platform. It will come with native phone payment and mobile wallet functionality in what is essentially a plastic-free play. Global payments scheme mastercard has come along for the ride and gets to bolt its mobile debit […]
Apple is becoming a formidable financial technology company
A growing anxiety for bank executives is how and when big tech companies will encroach on their turf. During its quarterly earnings call yesterday, Apple CEO Tim Cook gave some insight into the company’s progress in becoming something of a fintech player: Apple Pay transactions tripled from a year earlier, to more than 1 billion. Cook said that was more than Square and exceeded mobile transactions via PayPal. The worry for finance executives is that payments are just the beginning. Alibaba affiliate and fintech giant Ant Financial expanded from payments and into wealth management. According to analysts at research firm Bernstein, the Chinese company now runs a robo-advisory service that […]
