Australian Fintech and Startups
Spriggy, an app for children’s spending / pocket money, raised a $35m round NAB Ventures, Grok Ventures and Perennial. Love this app and it’s future capability. Link
Wisr announced a cracking quarter, with June being cash flow positive. The market liked it too (up ~9%). Link
CBA has called for more regulation on Apple, deeming it anti-competitive - specifically around the lack of ability to access the iPhone’s NFC chip. This argument held back the distribution of Apple Pay around 2016, and is rearing its head again (and I think there are valid reasons for and against). Link
Up added a feature allowing for a ‘spendable balance’ - aka your balance less the upcoming commitments you have such as a Netflix subscription. Gun feature. Link
Spaceship now has $1bn funds under management. Link
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Big Tech
Zuckerberg revealed his plan for Facebook to be part of the ‘metaverse’ - or the virtual world. Link
Cool Fintech of the Week
‘Furthr’ a card-linked wallet that allows you to earn cashback on purchases to put towards your next travelling experience - locally or afar. Your Furthr wallet automatically tops up after spending with a Mastercard or Visa card linked to the app. This two sided platform - loyalty for merchants and ~5% cashback for customers - is a clever application of the cashback concept, away from earning points (often via credit cards) and puts it all in one spot. The app is currently in Beta, so you can give it a rip but watch this space for new merchants. Check it out here.
Potpourri
The UK announced an implementation under the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), for mandating variable recurring payments (VRPs) as the mechanism for implementing automated sweeping. Lots of jargon here - so in other words, if you want to automatically top up a savings account after your salary is deposited (as an example), you now can, without requiring the entering of payment details (this is significant as you are not pushing the payment, a trusted third party is essentially pulling it based on a set of rules). VRPs also extend into things like automatically paying a Netflix subscription without entering a card details, and setting up an agreement with the merchant and the institution you wish to send the funds from (e.g. a Bank). This is similar to the NPP’s PayTo (more here), but it’s been orchestrated under Open Banking instead of via the UK’s Faster Payments service - so I think it bears similarity more with the CDR’s action initiation (write access) over NPP / PayTo - although use cases are analogous. Nonetheless, companies in the UK have 6 months to respond and implement this, which is a fairly tight timeline. I think this will provide some learnings on the development of action initiation - or write access - under the CDR, especially merging the consent guidelines around MPS and CDR.
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Jimmy’s Notes
What a huge week - especially in the quarterly results. I’m doing a special edition on OwnHome during the week - said I would this week but there was too much good info to put together - so watch this space!
Have a cracker 🍘 of a weekend.
Basiq Insights podcast on Afterpay Money as the next product iteration. Link
Trivia
(a) What three letter word can come before all of the following words to make new words? Bled, craft, den, path, rant, ring, saw, ship, and time.
(b) What are two words having to do with parenthood that are anagrams of "parental"
(c) Challenge: create the longest word you can using the abbreviated country names used in the Olympic games? (use comments or reply to this email)
Trivia Answers
(a) War-
(b) Prenatal, Paternal
(c) The record so far is 9 - CAM-PER-VAN (well done to my old man)