By Jim Bulling and Michelle Chasser
The Australian Federal Government is getting behind the Australian FinTech market with the establishment of a FinTech Advisory Committee to help make Australia a FinTech leader in the Asia Pacific region.
By Jim Bulling
The banking industry is expressing overwhelming support for the development and use of new technologies to improve the banking experience and have expressed their desire to enter into partnership with Fintech businesses.
By Jim Bulling
International banking group Investec Australia has purchased a 20% stake in equity crowdfunding platform Equitise. Equitise, which is based in New Zealand, was founded in Australia in 2014, but has developed its business model in New Zealand as a result of slow development to crowdfunding regulation in Australia. The deal values the startup at close to AUD$10 million.
By Cameron Abbott and Meg Aitken
The number of Australian consumer using contactless payment mediums is on the rise. Statistics revealed in the World Payments Report 2015 ranks Australia behind only the United States, Finland and the Netherlands as the countries recording the highest number of non-cash payments per person.
NAB is the most recent big-four bank to respond to changing consumer behaviour in the market. This week, NAB launched a new payment solution that allows customers to ‘tap and pay’ on Android phones. NAB claims the new ‘NAB Pay’ facility is the first in Australia to utilise the Visa Token Service and enables customers to make contactless payments via the bank’s existing app without revealing their account details.
Read more about the new NAB Pay mobile payment service here.
By Jim Bulling and Michelle Chasser
Rival technology powerhouses Apple, Google, Amazon, Intuit and PayPal have joined forces to form an advocacy group known as Financial Innovation Now, focused on enabling technological change within the finance industry. The group will work with policy-makers and key stakeholders to promote policies and regulations that encourage greater innovation in the financial services sector as well as ensuring that policy-makers understand the advantages that technology can bring to the industry.
by Jim Bulling and Michelle Chasser
After increasing concerns that robo-advisers may not fit neatly into existing regulations, Australian, United States and United Kingdom regulators have all indicated in the last few months that they will be looking at the appropriateness of current regulations for the increasingly fast growing industry of automated financial advice.
By Jim Bulling and Michelle Chasser
The past few months have seen considerable movement on the regulation of crowd-sourced equity funding on both sides of the Pacific. In the U.S., the SEC has adopted rules which allow companies to crowdfund through a registered portal while in Australia, the Australian Government has introduced a bill into Parliament which significantly enhances the viability and attractiveness of crowdfunding.
By Jim Bulling and Daniel Knight
Like riding a bike through Sydney or getting to Melbourne airport, launching a peer to peer lending platform in Australia is possible but not as easy as it should be. The Financial System Inquiry recommended changes and the Government’s response seemed to agree, but we are yet to see what will be done to facilitate innovation in marketplace lending.
By Jim Bulling and Daniel Knight
For fintech startups looking to operate in Australia, the hurdle of obtaining an AFSL is often daunting. An AFSL application can be expensive and time consuming but it’s rarely necessary to obtain an AFSL from day one. Whether it’s through an exemption, relief or authorisation, there’s usually another way.
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