Angel investor Aileen Lee coined the term “unicorn” in 2013 to describe a privately held start-up that reaches a billion-dollar valuation. They are so rare – mythological – they are called unicorns. This paper reviews the current fintech investment landscape in Australia and compares the outlook for fintech ventures with established financial business models. There are more than 733 recognised
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Banks, card companies and financial institutions like to encourage cashless payment systems. Cashless payment systems generate surcharges, fees, transaction revenue, merchant service charges and consumer information that can be bought and sold. But they still can’t provide reliability of access and ensure their payment and bank systems are UP and running all the times when they are needed, which is
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Actual real wallets are still more popular than mobile wallets Today Commonwealth Bank has issued media information suggesting that mobile wallets will soon overtake contactless cards as a favoured way to pay for goods and services. Commonwealth Bank says the dollar value of their total digital wallet transactions rose from $1.0 billion per month to $2.1 billion between March 2020
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Trying to find a bank branch near me is getting harder and harder. Bank branches are closing down fast. Bank owned ATMs are also closing. (Full list of suburbs and towns that are losing their big-bank branches is below). You can be forgiven for thinking we are we being herded into a cashless society because Australia lost 643 bank branches
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“So much winning, you’ll get tired of winning,” promised Donald Trump to his adoring supporters. The truth of his presidency may not have been quite as much winning as promised but the real truth he was speaking was clear. So clear, it seems kind of dumb to say it out loud: We live in a hyper-competitive world where ‘winning’ is
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For many years, I had been unable to lose weight without putting it back on quickly. Despite the diets and the punishing exercise regimes I was consistently over my healthy Body Mass Index and not liking myself because of it. Being heavier than I wanted to be meant I was secretly calling myself fat. I was criticising myself, even when
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Multiple bank ‘outages’ leave consumers stranded. Regular outages from big bank systems are leaving consumers and retailers stranded. Commonwealth Bank’s Netbank is reported to be OUT today (1 March 2021) leaving MILLIONS of Aussies without online access to account statements, online bill payments, online transfers and balances. ANZ Bank Mobile and Internet Banking systems were the subject of up to
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What’s on in Melbourne this Invasion Day (Australia Day holiday 26 January)? There’s no better way to start your holiday than with a swim in our beautiful Port Phillip Bay, followed by breakfast on the beach. We are starting this Invasion Day event with an acknowledgement of the Traditional Owners of the country: We acknowledge the Traditional Owners of this
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Netflix’s The Social Dilemma exposes the human impact of social media engineering – for profit. Netflix’s “The Social Dilemma,” is a top ten trending documentary-drama exploring the dangerous human impact of social engineering based on data. This is social media’s greatest tech experts sounding the alarm on their own monster creations. Released last week, The Social Dilemma focusses on the
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They said digital payments would defeat criminals, terrorists and money launderers but the opposite has turned out to be true. Money laundering through banks, hackers blackmailing legitimate listed companies for cryptocurrency payoffs and regular outages by my bank’s Eftpos system show cash may be our last bulwark against the crims and the thieves. Card companies and banks implied that cash
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Jason Bryce, Freelance Journalist 