With Gyft.com Inaccessible Outside of the US, You Can Still Buy Gift Cards Using Bitcoins
In May 2013, one of the biggest news was that Gyft.com had chosen to accept Bitcoin. Purchasing almost everything using Bitcoins was now a reality. This is because Gift cards from over 200 retail brands are sold on the digital gift card platform. And that translates to close to hundreds of thousands of both online and brick and mortar stores where you could spend your bitcoins. But Gyft.com has never been quite accessible from anywhere on the globe. It still defines its geographical market as the United States. Even so, in the early days, you could still create an account from anywhere on the globe and purchase gift cards. It […]
Stone & Chalk hopes interstate foray can spread innovation
In the intensely competitive world of fintech, it’s hard to overstate the benefit for Brand NSW from the ultra-low-cost Stone & Chalk hub, which aims to spread its tentacles to Melbourne before the end of the year. Sydney is already jostling for attention with global fintech destinations such as Silicon Valley, London, Tel Aviv, Singapore and Hong Kong — a status it’s achieved with the paltry investment of $2 million raised from the state government and industry. This column, however, has always advocated a national approach, which is why it’s so important that the rubber is starting to hit the road in Victoria. By the end of September, funding will […]
DigitalX announces deal with global telco Telefónica
ASX ANNOUNCEMENT: DigitalX Limited (ASX:DCC and “the Company”) is pleased to announce that Telefónica Internacional S.A.U. (“Telefónica”) is the Company’s first strategic partner in Latin America following the successful integration of the DigitalX AirPocket App into Telefónica’s network. The mobile phone giant signed a marketing, distribution and sales agreement with DigitalX, which was announced to the market via the ASX on 17 February 2016, that will give Telefónica’s Latin American customers access to DigitalX’s unique value transfer and remittance application, AirPocket. Telefónica, which has nearly 232 million telecommunication access points in Latin America, is one of the largest telcos in the region and is among the top five biggest telecommunications […]
Blockchain is here to stay
Blockchain, the technology that underpins Bitcoin, is the talk of the town at the moment. The financial services industry can’t get enough of it. The enthusiasm essentially boils down to the technology’s potential to reduce the financial transaction costs while ensuring robust security. While Bitcoin is unlikely to be make traditional currency extinct, blockchain has provided the impetus needed for new and innovative research into how the slow and often expensive centralised financial transaction systems that dominate banking, so what is this blockchain? Put simply, blockchain is a data structure that can be used to create digital ledgers of transactions shared among a distributed network of participating organisations. Financial institutions […]
Need to Know: Practical Bitcoin basics
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably heard the phrase Bitcoin uttered around tech circles, or maybe even on mainstream news outlets. Maybe you’ve seen Bitcoin as a payment option on stores like Steam and Microsoft’s. But what is Bitcoin, why should you care and is it worth bothering with? As to what Bitcoin is, simply put, it’s way of transferring money around. Some people think it’s a challenge to government reserve banks (probably not) or a whole new system of finance technology akin to the credit card (quite likely), but for us plebs, right now, it’s main utility is cheaply and quickly sending money from A to […]
WorldRemit chooses Australia to springboard growth in Asia-Pacific
Global leader in Mobile Money transfers appoints Michael Liu to drive growth in region. Mobile Money transfer service WorldRemit – the UK’s fastest-growing technology firm1 – has chosen Australia as its base in Asia-Pacific. One of Europe’s biggest FinTech services, the WorldRemit app, lets migrants send money instantly to their friends and family abroad in Latin America, Africa, Asia and the Pacific. WorldRemit is the leading sender of remittances globally to Mobile Money services, which have emerged as the payment system of choice in many developing countries where large numbers of people lack access to traditional banking services. With Mobile Money, people can instantly receive money transfers on their phones […]
Fintech startup HashChing is an online marketplace for borrowers and mortgage brokers
Fintech startup HashChing is an online marketplace for borrowers to access pre-negotiated home loan deals from verified mortgage brokers. The Sydney startup connects consumers instantly to their local mortgage broker based on their postcode and deal preference. The platform then sends the borrower a profile of each local mortgage broker with ratings and reviews collected by HashChing. “While 54 percent of Australians now trust mortgage brokers for home loans, finding a recommended local mortgage broker with ratings is a challenge as there is no other platform doing this currently,” said Mandeep Sodhi, cofounder of HashChing. “In this on-demand economy, consumers are used to services delivered in minutes and expect a […]
Australians wasting millions on international money transfers, as entrants offer big savings
Australians are wasting millions of dollars by sending money overseas via the big four banks instead of the booming number of nimble specialist players, experts warn. At present, a customer transferring $1000 from Australia to the United States could save $63 by avoiding the big four banks, which impose poor exchange rates and fees, and choosing a specialist such as the latest entrant World First. With the vast bulk of the average $9.7 billion transferred overseas each year conducted through CBA, NAB, Westpac and ANZ, experts are urging consumers to shop around. Source: Australians wasting millions on international money transfers, as entrants offer big savings
