Fintech start-up Afterpay plans ASX listing
Fintech start-up Afterpay — backed by legendary corporate raider Ron Brierley and a host of alumni from his former Guinness Peat Group — plans to list on the Australian Securities Exchange to supercharge growth plans after signing up more than 100 retailers to its online e-commerce product in the past nine months. Afterpay, whose backers include Mr Brierley’s ASX-listed Mercantile Investment Company, LinkedIn Southeast Asia managing director Cliff Rosenberg and Melbourne IVF founder John McBain, plans to raise $25 million in a float that will value the company at about $150m. Mr Brierley’s Mercantile last year bankrolled an $8m capital raising by the company. Mercantile is expected to emerge with […]
truRating launches in Australia, empowering businesses to capture mass customer feedback at point-of-payment
Award-winning UK-based point-of-payment rating system, truRating, has officially launched in Australia, giving businesses a straightforward and cost-effective way to collect immediate feedback from their customers when they pay. Using the payment terminal, truRating presents customers with a single feedback question, asking them to rate an aspect of their experience using a scale of 0-9 on the keypad. This gives companies a real-time, mass-market view of customer satisfaction and overall company performance on key metrics such as service, value or product selection, providing the insight they need to make changes and improvements. The UK fintech startup has demonstrated impressive growth, with over one million ratings processed globally to date, averaging 8,000 […]
MEDIA RELEASE: DomaCom
MEDIA RELEASE For immediate release Monday March 14, 2016 The willingness of more than 4500 mum-and-dad investors to commit more than $70 million to acquire a stake in the iconic S. Kidman & Co pastoral holding demonstrates the huge retail appetite for investment in agricultural assets. Arthur Naoumidis, chief executive officer of the property crowd-funder DomaCom, said in the group’s submission to the inquiry into the foreign investment review framework by the Senate Economics References Committee that this was the only conclusion that can be drawn from the public interest in Kidman, and that this committee, and the Parliament, should make every effort to encourage it. He said the widespread […]
Treasurer Scott Morrison tells big regulators to prepare for new fintech rules
Australia’s top financial regulators have been told by Treasurer Scott Morrison to prepare for a new system to regulate financial technology start-ups that will allow entrepreneurs to spend more time building business ideas and less time navigating complex financial services regulations. The federal government is expected to release next week policy changes to support the growth of fintech companies threatening to disrupt banking incumbents. This will include a “regulatory sandbox” scheme, which will allow fintech startups to test their products and systems in a controlled environment. Under the proposal, early stage start-ups would be able to avoid extensive regulatory licence applications, which can eat up seed capital before they determine […]
A quarter of bank revenue may be lost to disrupters: PwC
Incumbent banks throughout the world are bracing for the loss of almost a quarter of their revenue to financial technology disrupters during the next five years, a global survey by PwC has found. PwC’s global fintech report, published on Tuesday, finds 95 per cent of bankers believe at least some of their business will be given up to fintech players in the coming years. PwC’s Asia Fintech leader, John Shipman, said he was surprised the number wasn’t 100 per cent. “Almost all of the financial services clients I’ve spoken to acknowledge that fintechs either now or very shortly will have the ability to disrupt the majority of their business,” Mr […]
Decimal ‘pivots’ to institutional market
Nic Pollock, who commenced as Decimal’s new chief executive on 23 November 2015, spoke to InvestorDaily about Decimal’s change in strategy as well as its new executive structure. Decimal began the marketing push last week, with the announcement it now has over $3 billion in funds under advice on its platform. Along with the staffing changes, Decimal has also abandoned its adviser-targeted strategy (which saw it competing with the likes of IRESS, Rubik and Midwinter) by shifting its focus to building relationships with financial institutions. “In the second half of last year, that’s when we decided to pivot back to the enterprise view of the world and really make our […]
Australian fintech Activistic is tapping in to church donations
Micro-donations platform Activistic has signed Church Army UK to its soon-to-launch Ralli app, providing an entry into the significant church giving market. Donations to churches last year topped $100 billion in the US alone. Ralli ensures the lowest possible cost of fundraising via an efficient collection technology which enables regular payments via the giver’s phone bill. There is no need for credit cards or bank information. Church Army is made up of 11 independent Church Army societies in the UK, Australia, Barbados, Canada (called Threshold Ministries), Denmark, East Africa, Jamaica, Malawi, New Zealand, USA, Ireland, and Vanuatu. Its president is the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, and its patron […]
Fintechs push Morrison to enhance quality of credit data
Treasurer Scott Morrison has been urged to turn his encouraging words about fintech into action by pushing the big banks to share more information about customers to boost competition. In an article published in Thursday’s The Australian Financial Review, Mr Morrison said fintech could become a driver of economic growth and said the quality of data was important to those companies seeking to disrupt incumbents. Exactly two years since the comprehensive credit reporting (CCR) regime came into force, the fintech industry wants the government to mandate the regime and to extend the categories of data it captures. Data reported under the CCR allows competitors to the big banks to price […]
