Winners of the British Australian Fintech Forum Start-Up Competition announced
The Australian British Chamber of Commerce is delighted to announce the winners of seven supported places for the British Australian Fintech Forum to be held in London between the 19th and 21st of April 2017. The winners are (in no particular order): Chris King – Splend Edward Jones – Neu Capital Rob Lincolne – Paydock Doug Morris – Sharesight Charlotte Petris – Timelio Jack Stevens – Edstart Emma Weston – AgriDigital Andrew Chick, Chairman of the BAFF Committee said: “We received over 50 applications for our supported places. The Selection Committee was very impressed with the quality of submissions and deciding on the final seven was particularly difficult. We are […]
Australia’s $2.2 trillion super pot drives record ETF demand
Australia’s $2.2 trillion superannuation savings pot is fuelling record demand for exchange traded funds. The number of self-managed super funds holding such investments surged to a record 100,000 in September, according to a report from BetaShares Capital and Investment Trends. SMSFs worth $635 billion are stoking hunger for income-producing assets and drove a 31 per cent surge in the number of Aussie investors who used exchange traded funds last year. Exchange traded funds (ETFs) are a type of investment that can be bought and sold like shares, tracking assets such as commodities, currencies, bonds or market indices such as the S&P/ASX 200 up and down. The interest in those funds […]
Prospa secures $25M in funding led by AirTree Ventures; Passes $250 Million in Loans to Small Business
Prospa, Australia’s leading online lender to small business, has secured $25M in growth funding led by AirTree Ventures – Australia’s most successful tech-focused venture capital firm. The deal is the largest fintech venture capital investment in an Australian business. Prospa also announced it had passed $250 Million in total loans to small businesses in Australia. The investment comes after a period of significant growth for Prospa who is now the clear market leader for online lending to small businesses in Australia. Prospa will use the funds to accelerate its market leadership: boosting technology, product expansion and distribution, ramping up talent acquisition and building a world-class brand. Greg Moshal, Founder and […]
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. […]
Co-working boom, but no room
Nearly three-quarters of start-ups are now based in co-working spaces, up from half a year ago, according to a major survey of founders, and the sites are running out of room. The 2016 Startup Muster survey released on Wednesday shows the NSW government’s plan for a 15,000 square metre start-up hub in or near the Sydney CBD is desperately needed. Co-working spaces were home for 72.3 per cent of the 685 verified start-ups that responded to the survey, up from 49 per cent in the 2015 Startup Muster. The arrival of international co-working brands such as Rocketspace and WeWork have helped popularise the concept, according to Brad Delamare, general manager […]
Mint Payments expands travel portfolio with new partner agreement
Payments processing technology provider, Mint Payments (ASX: MNW) has partnered with one of Australia’s most affordable and adaptable travel agency software solution providers TravelPartner (Aust) Pty Ltd, signing a two-year licence and distribution agreement to deliver its fully integrated online payments processing service to its growing network of travel agents. TravelPartner has integrated Mint’s card payment module into its core SaaS product offering VTO Ultimate to enable seamless and easy credit card payment acceptance by travel agents for all travel and service fee transactions. This partnership removes the current manual effort required by the agent as the software seamlessly creates an invoice, takes payment, generates a receipt and reconciles it […]
Banks pay lip service to fintech collaboration
Banks need to become “platforms” that deliver financial services alongside various start-up partners, but many banks are paying lip service to collaboration and remain reluctant to engage with the local fintech ecosystem, according to Alex Scandurra, chief executive of fintech hub Stone & Chalk. The notion that a bank can merely innovate internally “is such outdated thinking,” he told the 1300 delegates to the Reimagination’16 summit in Sydney on Thursday. Banks needed to shift from thinking they sell a mortgage, deposit or loan to being “a platform of services [that] deliver a whole range of things to customers, some of which are built and delivered by [the bank], some of […]
Stone & Chalk says the new paradigm is outside-in innovation
It should come as no surprise that Alex Scandurra, chief executive officer Stone & Chalk, is a passionate advocate of collaboration: the raison d’être, justification, objective and mission statement of Stone & Chalk is to help foster and accelerate the development of world-leading fintech start-ups, by leveraging greater collaboration between stakeholders in the fintech eco-system. Stone & Chalk itself is a collaborative effort between fintech entrepreneurs, venture capital (VC) firms, companies, academia and government, to incubate and nurture financial services-focused tech start-ups in ways not seen in Australia before. “Collaboration is at the core of what we do, and it’s one of the main reasons why we’ve been able to […]
