KG2 partners with Valiant Finance to support Australian Farmers

KG2 – Australia’s largest independent farmer database will offer Australian farmers on its database, referrals to business lending specialist Valiant Finance. This will enable farmers to find the right farm loan solution to run and grow their farming enterprises. 

Farmers are busy people… The integration of Valiant’s proprietary platform with KG2’s farmer database will enable the farmers to obtain a quote or a callback and book an appointment with a Valiant Business Finance Specialist at a time that suits them. 

Valiant Business Finance Specialists will help farmers navigate the options available to get the right farm loan at the best rate.  Valiant’s business lending platform manages the end-to-end process from enquiry to settlement.

KG2 has been talking to farmers for over 20 years and understands that banking interest charges are a major cost in running the farm. Last financial year national farm debt totalled $87 billion, growing by $12.7 billion in the previous 12 months, if KG2 can save farmers even 0.5% on average that would be a significant win for the Australian farmers.

”KG2 can now present farmers the opportunity to access a full range of financial products, at rates they might not otherwise be exposed to.” Andrew Negline, KG2 Commercial Director

 “Valiant’s goal is to become the only place for business finance, in the process helping as many Australian businesses as possible,” says Paul Barker, Director of Strategic Partnerships at Valiant. “Partnering with KG2 opens up a large, underserviced sector of Australian businesses where we can really add value to a farmer’s business and save them valuable time”

Valiant has helped to fund more than $750 million in lending for its customers since 2015.

For further information please contact:

KG2 – Adam McNeill, amcneill@kg2.com.au

Valiant – Andreas Polizois, andreas.polizois@valiant.finance

FSS (Financial Software and Systems),  a leading global provider of integrated payment products and a payment processor, is to collaborate with Zwipe to bring next-generation contactless payment cards to issuers globally.  Zwipe is a payment FinTech recognized for having pioneered the development of biometric payments and has delivered many successful pilots around the world.

FSS is among the leading providers of card issuance products globally and its card portfolio consists of 800 plus million payment cards for Tier One banks and payment processors. The organisations will be working together closely, offering greater value to customers by combining FSS’s Unified Issuance Platform and Zwipe Pay One biometric card capabilities,  supported by Zwipe’s fast-growing global network of card manufacturing partners.  

The widespread adoption of contactless payment cards has been a huge success in recent  years1. The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the use of contactless payments even further as consumers demand a safe, contact-free transacting environment. However, the lack of cardholder authentication with contactless cards translates into usage is restricted to relatively small and medium value payments, hampering the ability to deliver a fully contact-free experience for all payment values. The response to this is the biometric payment card that fully enables contact-free transactions while boosting confidence and security for consumers, retailers and issuers.

Commenting on the partnership K Srinivasan, Chief Operating Officer, FSS PayTech, said  “Biometric payment cards will bring strong differentiation and value uplift to our card issuance and management offerings. Our collaboration with Zwipe will help our issuer clients to deliver a completely touchless and PIN-free check out experience, better in-store payments hygiene and much stronger cardholder security. Needless to say, now more than ever,  innovation can play a critical role within the context of the global pandemic which makes it even more important to bring solutions such as this quickly to our customers. Zwipe Pay ONE  is recognized as the most advanced (Gen3) biometric payment technology and complements  FSS’ innovative card portfolio. It will be made available to our clients for piloting and deployment from H2 2021”.

As part of this collaboration, FSS will offer Zwipe Pay ONE biometric payment cards globally.  The initial focus will be in those markets where contactless is bringing considerable benefits in the area of financial inclusion as seen in Canada, India and a number of countries within  Europe, the Middle East (GCC countries) and Africa. Both partners will start engaging with issuers from Q2 2021 and aim for starting pilots from 2H 2021.  

“We are humbled and proud to partner with FSS, one of the most respected and global providers of payment services. This is a landmark alliance for Zwipe and will significantly accelerate our growth globally, most notably in Asia, the world’s largest payment market,”  said André Løvestam, CEO of Zwipe.

About FSS 

Financial Software and Systems (FSS) is a leader in payments technology and transaction processing.  The company offers an integrated portfolio of software products, hosted payment services and software solutions built over 30+ years of experience. FSS, end-to-end payments products suite,  powers retail delivery channels including ATM, POS, Internet and Mobile as well as critical back-end functions including cards management, reconciliation, settlement, merchant management and device monitoring. Headquartered in Chennai, India, FSS services leading global banks, financial institutions,  processors, central regulators and governments across North America, UK, Europe, ME, Africa, and  APAC and has 2,500 experts on board. For more information visit www.fsstech.com 

About Zwipe 

Zwipe is pioneering the next generation contactless payments experience, providing biometric payment cards components and wearables technology that enable consumers to authorize transactions with their fingerprints without compromising their privacy. Together with an ecosystem of partners including global brands within digital security and financial services, Zwipe is “Making  Convenience Safe & Secure” for banks, merchants and consumers. Zwipe’s solutions address the hygiene and data theft pitfalls inherent in traditional authentication methods. Headquartered in Oslo,  Norway, with a global presence, Zwipe is leading the next great shift in payments from contactless to contact-free. To learn more, visit www.zwipe.com 

Media Contacts: 

André Løvestam, CEO /info@zwipe.com/ +47 991 66 135  

Rajalekshme. R /rajalekshmer@fss.co.in/ +91 95 0008 8290

Medipass Solutions announces acquisition by leading Australian fintech, Tyro Payments.

Medipass Solutions today announced it has been acquired by leading Australian fintech Tyro Payments. Medipass will merge with Tyro’s health practice to create Australia’s leading healthcare payments platform.

Medipass Chief Executive Officer, Jonathan Davey, said, “this merger will create the new global benchmark in simple, transparent healthcare claims and payments.”

“Combining Medipass’ digital healthcare payment and claiming solution with Tyro’s leading healthcare terminal business will deliver a unified offering and a world-class experience. Patients, practitioners, health funds and statutory payers will be connected in one simple and secure platform. The combined business will provide an integrated claim and pay solution to all health practitioners and bring much needed transparency and simplicity to the A$130bn in payments and claims that are made every year.”

Medipass was founded in 2016 and enables healthcare providers to quickly get paid from a range of insurers, including Medicare, private health insurers, Insurance & Care (icare) NSW, Department of Veterans’ Affairs and more. The solution integrates into 17 cloud-based practice management and booking systems. Medipass has grown significantly over the last 4 years, driving change and the adoption of digital solutions to healthcare providers and creating administrative efficiencies. This growth was further accelerated with the rapid change in healthcare delivery models in the last year.

Tyro’s health business provides terminal claiming for Private Health Insurance and Medicare as well as payment services. Tyro has been working with the health sector for over a decade and integrates with 39 Practice Management Software systems across General Practice, Allied Health, Dental, Pharmacy and Specialists.

For an entirely digital experience, Medipass offers solutions that require no hardware or terminals, but healthcare providers and ultimately their patients want solutions that cater to all situations including where they want to tap, swipe or insert a card. The unified Tyro and Medipass proposition will deliver the strength of Tyro’s existing terminal solution, including its customer base and software integrations, with the leading digital claiming technology, customer base and software integrations of Medipass.

As the healthcare ecosystem moves towards a digital future, we believe that a combined Tyro and Medipass payments offering will cater for both traditional in-practice and emerging ways that healthcare is being delivered, including telehealth and in-home, and the operational processes built around them.

Jonathan Davey will lead the merged entity with Medipass Executives Pete Williams and Adrian Perillo assuming critical leadership roles.

Tyro CEO, Robbie Cook, said, “we are excited about the opportunity to work with Medipass, and ultimately to leverage the experience and capability of both companies to develop solutions that create efficiencies across the entire health care system. The Medipass team has built a solution unmatched in its capability, with a strong focus on customer service, which is critical as healthcare businesses make the shift to digital. Coupled with Tyro’s leading terminal solution, we have a unified proposition that will meet all of a healthcare provider’s payment needs, now and well into the future”.

About Medipass

Medipass is an Australian health fintech, based in Melbourne. The company was established on the belief that a better health system demands better ways to connect and pay. Medipass builds digital health-grade payment solutions, connecting patients, practitioners and payers in ways that drive efficiency and better care experiences.

Medipass has grown to be Australia’s leading digital health payments platform. For healthcare providers and partners, Medipass offers more digital claiming options than any other platform, including government funders, private health insurers and direct gap payments. With deep industry partner integrations and strong investment in integrating third-party systems used by providers to make digital claiming a native and streamlined process, Medipass is closely aligned to healthcare provider workflows.

About Tyro

Tyro is a technology-focused and values-driven company providing Australian businesses with payment solutions and value-adding business banking products. The company provides simple, flexible and reliable payment solutions as a merchant acquirer, along with complimentary business banking products.

For the more than 36,700 Australian merchants who chose to partner with Tyro on 31 December 2020, the company processed more than $20.1 billion in transaction value in FY20 and a record $12.1 billion in H1 FY21. In FY20 the company generated $93.5 million in gross profit (H1 FY21 $61.2 million), originated $60.1 million in loans (H1 FY21: $2.6 million) and held merchant deposits totalling $50.5 million (H1 FY21: $104.0 million).

Tyro is Australia’s fifth largest merchant acquiring bank by a number of terminals in the market, behind the four major banks.

The business was founded in 2003 with the goal of being the most efficient acquirer of electronic payments in Australia. Tyro has a track record of innovation, creating purpose-built solutions and being first to market. This approach saw the company become the first technology company to receive an Australian specialist credit card institution licence in 2005. In 2015 that licence was replaced by the award of an Australian banking licence, making Tyro the first new domestic banking licensee in over a decade.

Payments are at the core of Tyro’s business, using its proprietary core technology platform to enable credit and debit card acquiring. This offering is enhanced by features purpose-designed for those merchants who choose to partner with the company, including Point of Sale systems integrations, least-cost routing (Tap & Save) and alternative payment types such as integrated Alipay. While traditionally focused on in-store payments, Tyro has recently expanded into eCommerce.

Further, Tyro provides value-adding solutions to its partners, such as loans in the form of merchant cash advances and fee-free, interest-bearing merchant transaction accounts.

Tyro has a team of more than 500 people, approximately half of whom are in technology roles.

For media enquiries, please contact:

Jonathan Davey

Medipass CEO

email: media@medipass.io

Australia is at the forefront of giving consumers greater control over their financial data via the Consumer Data Right (CDR) and the Government is committed to the financial sector being the first to adopt these sweeping changes, all institutions encouraged to become CDR compliant in 2021. That is why FinSS Global and Salt Edge are aiming to help the smaller banks, credit unions, building societies, Neobanks and Fintechs, follow strict regulations while protecting customers’ data and privacy under open banking, through Salt Edge’s CDR Compliance Solution.

With phase two of the regulatory adoption quickly approaching, technology solutions start-up FinSS Global has extended its partnership with Salt Edge Inc, an ISO 27001 compliant leader in developing open banking solutions, to enable the smaller Australian financial institutions wanting to become Data Holders, to meet all the strict CDR requirements within 1-2 months. 

The CDR Compliance Solution is essentially Data Holder “compliance in a box”. It has everything you need to be CDR compliant and is a holistic approach made up of components and configuration items such as an API for sharing consumer data together with a sandbox for ADRs’ testing, a Consent Management API to assure end-customers full visibility and control over their granted contents, a dashboard for the data holder to have full control and access to insightful statistics, an ADR Developer Portal for seamless integration and interaction with the organisation’s channel, a Multi-factor authentication solution for end-customers security, ADR verification, and much more. 

The solution is based on a SaaS model which makes it secure, easily deployable and reduces the amount of technical implementation and skills required from Data Holders. Salt Edge handles all the maintenance, regular updates according to new changes in the Consumer Data Standard (CDS) requirements, and even assists with passing the Conformance Test Suite (CTS) process. 

Open banking represents just the first phase of Australia’s strategy in making the sharing of any kind of customer data easier. That is why the CDR Compliance Solution is flexible and can be tailored so that it fits any industry or business case requirement, including the potential addition of payment initiation possibilities in the future. 

“We partnered with Salt Edge in 2020 because we believed their experience with PSD2 in the UK and Europe and some of their solutions could be of significant benefit to the smaller Australia Financial Institutions looking to participate in the emerging CDR Ecosystem. This resulted in us working closely with Salt Edge to adapt their SaaS-based “compliance in a box” solution for the small to medium banking domain and launch the CDR Compliance Solution for Australia. We are excited to be working with Salt Edge and speaking with our target market and potentially their Service Providers, about a quick solution to becoming a compliant Australian Data Holder in the emerging CDR Ecosystem.” commented Dallas Newton, CEO and Co-Founder at FinSS Global.

“While helping businesses across the globe to set their strategy in leveraging Open Banking, we understood that all of it might often seem like a regulatory and technological burden for institutions. That is why together with FinSS Global, we are committed to guiding Australian financial institutions towards a seamless CDR compliance journey,” commented Lisa Gutu, Head of Business at Salt Edge. 

About FinSS Global

Fintech Solutions and Services (Global) Pty Ltd (FinSS Global) – established in Melbourne, Australia in 2019, as an organisation focused on Data Compliance, Debt/Collection Management, Banking Solutions, including Open Banking (CDR) Enablement, and Digital Transformation. Our target market is the small to medium Australian Authorised Deposit-taking Institutions (ADIs), Lenders/Credit Providers, Neobanks and emerging Fintechs. We offer our own leading-edge (digital) solutions and expertise, as well as solutions and capabilities from key like-minded Strategic Partners, such as Salt Edge Inc and Railz Inc, to cost-effectively meet the needs of our target market.

More information: www.finssglobal.com

Phone number: +61 3 9005 1030

Email: info@finssglobal.com

About Salt Edge

Salt Edge – a financial API platform with PSD2 and open banking solutions. The company has two main vectors of activity: enabling third parties to get access to bank channels via a unified gateway and developing the technology necessary for banks to become compliant with the directive’s requirements. ISO 27001 certified and AISP licensed under PSD2, the company employs the highest international security measures to ensure stable and reliable connections between financial institutions and their customers. The company is integrated with 5000+ financial institutions in 50+ countries.

More information: www.saltedge.com 

Phone number: +1-437-886-3969

Email: press@saltedge.com

Today is a big day for Frollo, as we’re finally able to announce we have signed ANZ as a client for our Open Banking platform. ANZ will use Frollo’s CDR Gateway to receive consumers’ financial data from other Data Holders as part of its active participation in the CDR ecosystem as a Data Recipient.

Our Open Banking platform helps businesses fast track the process of becoming an Accredited Data Recipient (ADR) and use Open Banking data to deliver compelling customer propositions in lending, PFM and other areas. With over 7 Million Open Banking API calls to date, the platform is responsible for over 95% of Open Banking activity thus far in Australia. This has enabled us to learn from real-world experience and build a reliable, highly configurable and complete solution for B2B clients.

Canstar, Australia’s biggest comparison site has today announced their partnership with Frollo, to launch their first PFM app.

Canstar uses the Frollo PFM platform to provide its customers with a market-leading mobile financial wellbeing tool. Users of the Canstar app will benefit from AI-powered insights on their spending, plus the ability to track bills, create a budget and set personal goals and challenges.

The synergy between our PFM and Canstar’s product comparison platform means customers can be presented with actionable solutions based on the insights, such as showing the impact on their savings goal from switching to other products and timely offers.

The partnership has enabled Canstar to rapidly launch an app to market and to start learning from user feedback on the customer experience before adding Open Banking functionality.

The Canstar PFM app

Commenting on the partnership and the launch of Canstar’s first app, the company’s Group Executive, Digital and Marketing, Sara Tweedly said, “Helping our customers in every way we can to make better money decisions is the driving force behind the launch of our app.”

“We already have tools that enable customers to check their credit score and to see if they are likely to qualify for a product, so the ability to see all their banking in one place is a great addition. We are thrilled to now be working with Frollo and excited about the opportunities this first foray into PFM solutions signals for Canstar customers.”

“Operating a dual-sided marketplace with one of the biggest financial product databases in the country, we have the tech and capability to produce really meaningful data-driven insights and action for our customers.

“Canstar has over 700 brands on the site across more than 35 finance categories, meaning we are well-positioned with relevant offers from our partners to help our customers find the right product at the right time.

“All of this is just the beginning of our journey to merge managing your personal finances with the comparison service. The PFM space and the partnership with Frollo is an important step for Canstar. Imagine a world where we are able to rely on real-time banking data from customers to help to identify where they are paying too much and could save money by switching and the means to make the move. This will be the ultimate personal finance management solution.”

With more than 2 million Australians** visiting the Canstar websites each month, the comparison platform presents a big opportunity for the future of Open Banking, says Frollo.

Frollo founder and CEO Gareth Gumbley said, “Canstar is a name and brand we trust; the team are innovators with an incredible platform and extensive audience reach. We’re excited Canstar has chosen to take the financial comparison to the next level with Frollo’s personal finance management platform.”

“The possibility of what we can achieve together stems from our brands’ shared mission to improve people’s financial wellbeing. Linking PFM with a sizeable comparison service means Australians will have the best of both worlds being the ability to understand their financial wellbeing and the means to improve it.

“There is so much more to explore in the comparison space and with Open Banking becoming more relevant to consumers we’re looking forward to the opportunity of working further with Canstar.”