Shayping the future of financial experiences

Shaype is the engine behind some of Australia’s most visible brands, discreetly and reliably powering the delivery of innovative digital financial experiences.

Some companies are born for the spotlight, broadcasting their credentials using slick social media profiles, branded consumer products and celebrity endorsements. 

Shaype operates differently. As a licensed financial institution powering the payment ecosystems behind high-profile names like Kit by CBA and Employment Hero, Shaype remains largely invisible to the end user – yet essential to their seamless experience. 

And that is by design, according to Shaype Australia CEO Mark Hansell. “What’s important to the Shaype brand is removing complexity and enabling innovation for our clients, who are the ones providing the experience to their customers,” he explains. 

Operating in Australia since 2018, Shaype powers digital financial solutions for an expanding roster of clients, ranging from global financial institutions to emerging enterprises. Shaype spent two years building its underlying ecosystem before becoming its own first customer to launch the travel and money management app ‘Hay’, demonstrating its impressive financial capabilities. 

Shaype’s investors continue to double down as the company achieves on its mission, including an A$33 million Series C in 2022 and a recent A$15 million top up through existing shareholders in 2024. Shaype became profitable last year, achieving 246% revenue growth and a list of new client launches, including Halal Money, ANNA Money and being selected by ANZ to help phase out cheques.

Shaype is now in the process of expanding internationally, starting with the UK. 

Beneath the iceberg 

Moving money today is deceivingly fast and feels seamless, masking layers and layers of moving parts that must work together. 

It begins when consumers first engage with their money, like an app or website. Underneath this digital experience sits the payment infrastructure, technology, regulatory licensing, security and all the accompanying operational elements. 

Many payments companies and fintechs provide one or maybe several of the myriad steps involved. Shaype, from its outset, was a more ambitious undertaking. 

Founder, global CEO and former hedge fund manager Andrew Laycock and his team patiently built all the working parts required – pre-revenue – for a comprehensive and interconnected ecosystem that can quickly deliver a high-quality end-to-end experience to customers. 

“We effectively provide all layers of that iceberg,” explains Chief Commercial Officer Dan McCarthy. 

“That means that to bring a new digital experience into the market, there’s no need to coordinate five or six different service suppliers to try and stitch that together. Shaype’s model simplifies and de-risks traditional challenges to bring that experience into the market.” 

Shaype’s ecosystem includes low or no-code tools, including a payments app code base, a back-office management platform, and a real-world testing environment for proof-of-concept products. It has comprehensive risk, compliance and change management programs to support rapid product launch and growth. 

Big clients, small clients, same challenges 

Shaype Australia CEO Mark Hansell and CCO Dan McCarthy.

This all-inclusive service offering has proven useful to both large financial institutions and fast-growing start-ups, all seeking to bring customer-first solutions to market without the compromises that so often arise during the development process. 

At the big end of town, where Hansell has spent much of his career, internal siloed conversations and considerations involving legacy infrastructure “all begin to make concessions of what began as a vision of a beautiful, customer-focused solution.” 

In emerging companies where McCarthy has cut his teeth, compromises grow out of limits on available resources and subject matter expertise. Equally, these challenges inhibit companies from providing an experience that fosters a regular and ongoing financial relationship with  
their customers. 

Those compromises may seem small, but they compound, Hansell says, ultimately making the difference between a vaguely successful product and one that will alter the status quo on market share and product differentiation. 

Shaype removes these traditional silos, operating as a standalone product for clients beginning with a blank slate or intelligently integrating with existing infrastructure via its API middleware technology. This makes it faster for new products to be developed, tested and then launched to market. 

“Ultimately, as long as the user experience is smooth and hassle-free, how it works under the hood doesn’t matter to most customers,” says Hansell. 

On to bigger things 

Flush with new investment capital, Shaype now powers 45 financial institutions in Australia and last year saw transaction growth of 165%. It continued to enhance  
its platform with new capabilities, including a customer experience layer, transaction ledger, client treasury services and cloud-agnostic hosting. 

Shaype has also won prestigious industry awards for innovation, fintech collaboration and operational excellence, including honours at the Australian Financial Review’s Most Innovative Companies awards, EPAA APAC Excellence in Payment awards, and the Australian Fintech Awards. 

International expansion is well underway, with new offices in London and Belfast, the signing of Shaype’s first UK client, and a planned entry into Canada in 2025. 

Hansell foresees Shaype’s ability to launch products overseas with the same ease as in Australia, which will be a huge advantage for Shaype and its clients. 

“We have clients who are already international and pushing us into other markets,” Hansell says. 

“Historically, when you look at international expansion, other players in the market have done that through acquisition. What happens is when you’re talking to a single company, you’re talking to six or seven banking stacks or technology infrastructures. That step into another geography is like starting again each time.” 

An international Shaype would make that process more straightforward. 

With all these accolades, will the team at Shaype be driven to embrace the limelight a little more or simply be content to remain anonymous? 

McCarthy says Shaype remains agnostic as to whether its role is visible. 

“As we continue to grow the number of clients and products in Australia and beyond, maybe there will be some form of positive sentiment where a Shaype-powered experience is what we as consumers want or even come to expect from our financial institutions.” 

Who is Shaype?

Shaype is Australia’s leading financial product innovation partner, enabling businesses to rapidly build, test, launch and optimise seamless digital financial services and world class customer experiences.  

Develop and deliver award-winning payments solutions with the Shaype Ecosystem and empower your brand, business or bank with tomorrow’s financial experiences, today.  

What is the Shaype Ecosystem?  

The Shaype Ecosystem is your toolbox of financial technology and payment services that can be used to power a wide range of product experiences, as well as new and innovative financial solutions previously not thought possible.  

The Shaype Ecosystem gives you control to orchestrate unique experiences that can respond and update in real-time. By combining standard and customisable capabilities, Shaype clients can create an end-to-end financial solution or complement an existing one, built and launched in weeks or months – not years.  

Learn more at www.shaype.com or contact the team via bizdev@shaype.com to meet and chat about your needs.