February 2023 - Fintech Summary

A big month in Feb - now over $100m of announced funding in to Aus and NZ fintechs for 2023...

Thanks to over 4000 people who have subscribed to this newsletter!

Let's get straight to the headlines for the month.

Cheers

Chris

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• Qantas launched “Qantas Money Home Loan” powered by Adelaide based Tic:Toc ????

• Brisbane based Alex.Bank launched their new Term Deposit product, further bolstering its growing product portfolio. ????

• Sydney based Bridgit partnered ?? with outsource Financial . This marks the latest aggregator partnership for Bridgit and expands its total network to more than 3400 brokers. ??outsource Financial (outsource), alone, works with more than 1000 brokers.

• Sydney based Skript launched Transkript, a plug and play ?? application used to securely request & receive open banking data.

• Barry Kogan, Jonathan Henry and Rob Smith, partners of McGrathNicol were appointed Joint and Several Receivers and Managers (Receivers and Managers) of ASX listed Openpay ???

• Gold coast based Send Payments raised $11.5m in a Series B round ?? to accelerate opportunities in Australia & offshore

• Sydney based Shift raised ?? $27m to help scale their receivables & to make further investment in tech ?? and data ?? ?

• Commonwealth Bank announced ?? it has connected customers to $1b of grants, rebates & concessions through their Benefits finder ??- More than 2.2 million claims were started by personal and business customers between January 2019 and December 2022.

• Westpac will offer its credit card ?? customers more flexible payment options with the introduction of "PartPay", allowing their customers to pay for purchases in four instalments. ? ??

• Sydney based Shift raised ?? $27m to help scale their receivables & to make further investment in tech ?? and data ?? ?

• Commonwealth Bank announced a NPAT of $5.15b for 1H23 ??? Matt Comyn CEO, said: “Our strategic focus on building tomorrow’s bank ??today for our customers is illustrated by our leading outcomes on customer advocacy scores.”

• Carolyn Breeze GAICD announced she is joining as CEO at Scalare Partners - with portfolio companies such as FrankieOne

• Experian announced the appointment of data aggregation and analytics platform Envestnet | Yodlee as its official Open Data API provider in Australia. ??????

• Brisbane based ASX listed Change Financial secured A$6.9m in new fundjng from US-based fintech entrepreneur & investor Michael Giles ????

• ASX listed Bendigo and Adelaide Bank has said their digital bank Up now has 613,000 customers ??? and $1.3 billion in deposits ?? at the end of the half. Up Home ?? - their mortgage product has settled $38 million in home loans.

• ASX listed Judo Bank has announced ?? their Gross Loan and Advances ?? as at Dec 2022 was $7.5b up 23%, revenue up 67% and profit before tax up >300% to $53m ??

• Sydney based DataMesh Group has raised $30m in their Series A round with NAB Ventures, 1835i and Deutsche Bank participating in the round.

• Sydney based investing platform Blossom App have announced ?? they have had $1 million in earnings posted to their community since inception. ?? They currently have $35+ million in funds under management.

• ASX listed Zip Co reported some metrics :TTV ???: $4.9b, Customers ??: 7.3m, Transactions ??: 42.2m , Merchants ??: 97,500 The company aims to be “group positive cash EBTDA during 1H24”

• Wisr announced their 1H results ?? - New loan originations of $302M Revenue of $43.2M , New loan originations of $302m, Q2FY23 delivered profitability with Cash EBTDA of $0.5M along with positive operating cash flow of $1.5M

• Joseph Healy and David Hornery, co founders of Judo Bank have released their book "Black Belt" ??

• ASX listed Tyro Payments released their 1H results: Transactional Value: $21.693b ??, Revenue: $220.6m ?? EBITDA: $19.5m , Net Profit: $1.1m ??

• Westpac has launched Tap to Pay on EFTPOS Air ?? - a mobile app?? for Android which allows any sole trader, single director company or association with a Westpac business transaction to accept payments. ??

• ASX listed Raiz Invest has announced their 1H report :- 676k active customers ??, - Australian ????business continues to be operating cash flow positive in December quarter - $9.3m revenue, $2.4m ebitda loss