At Fintech Perth‘s December meetup, Techboard Co-Founder Peter van Bruchem announced Western Australia’s 5 top ranked Fintech companies for 2016 taken from Techboard’s 2016 annual ranking. The ranking reflects the combined scores for all Western Australian based or originated Startups tracked in Techboard’s fortnightly rankings that it has been running since September 2015.
Here is the top 5… and their overall positions in Techboard’s 2016 ranking.
[table id=88 /]
Click on the company names to view their Techboard profiles.
Some observations on these five companies.
- Three of these companies, Pin Payments, Crowdfundup and Simply Wall Street hit the number one spot on Techboard’s fortnight rankings during 2016. Bankvault and Activistic’s highest rankings were both third.
- All companies have or are planning operations outside of Western Australia, with Pinpayments being based between Perth and Melbourne and Bankvault between Perth and Sydney. Simply Wall St has relocated to Sydney. Activistic’s operations are mostly in the US and UK and Crowdfundup is planning to open an Office in China.
- Only one company (Activistic) has raised funds on the public markets (c$8M). The others have all raised private investment with disclosed raises between $600K (Simply Wall St) and $3.1M (Pin Payments).
Below is a overview of each of the five companies.
Crowdfundup
CrowdfundUP launched in Australia’s first real estate crowdfunding platform aimed at simplifying real estate investing after pivoting from Equity crowdfunding. CrowdfundUP connect Investors to Property Groups and investment opportunities across Australia completely online. To date over $15 million has been invested on the platform, with over $650,000 paid out to investors.
In October this year CrowdfundUP announced it had raised $2.1 from Positive Investment Enterprise, an asset development and investment conglomerate. The fresh capital going towards further developing CrowdfundUP’s technology and expanding the team to accelerate the startup’s growth, as well as expansion into China as the Chinese appetite for Australian property continues to grow.
Simply Wall St
Simply Wall St aims to help retail investors make informed decisions by giving you access to institutional quality data and analysis presented visually. Simply Wall St Launched in Perth (coming from a team in a Weekend Startup called NinjaVest) but have relocated to Sydney. The company was started after the founders realised how many people were buying stocks without doing proper research because it was just too hard with the result that many investors either end up losing money or have an underperforming portfolio.
Simply Wall St’s offering starts with free plans for novice small scale investors and free trials of their Investor Plan.
BankVault
BankVault has developed software and devices that Protect your bank account from being hacked. In June 2016 BankVault beat startups from all around the world and was awarded the best FinTech startup in the world by Silicon Valley Forum. BankVault relies on the security and privacy established logically through the use of a remote ‘virtual machine’ to go online instead of a user’s physical computer. BankVault’s offering starts at $16.60 per month (annual Subscription) for its professional plan.
BankVault was recently announced as an official partner of the Australian Government’s Stay Smart Online program to help raise people’s awareness of how to protect themselves online in their personal and working lives.
BankVault works between its Perth offices and at Fintech co-working space Tyro FinTech Hub in Sydney.
Pin Payments
Pin Payments provides Businesses with a platform for accepting payments online without the need for a merchant account, with interfaces into all online stores and platforms regardless of whether the payments are being made in person, on-line, via an online invoice link or via a smartphone at Point of sale. Pin Payments’ development team is Perth based, while their sales and marketing team are headquartered in Melbourne. Pin Payments’ solution works on transaction fees without lock-in contracts.
Activistic
Activistic develops micro-donation apps to reduce the barriers for people to give to causes. Activistic is the only ASX listed company in our top 5 ASX:ACU. The company’s activities are mostly in the USA with its Veteran’s Call App and in the UK with its Ralli app. The company also provides a white label solution to facilitate the making of donations, such as for a US Congressman Joe Garcia in the recent US election.
