Change was selected in a cohort of 9 Australian fintechs to participate in the Fintech Australian and Austrade program to help financial services and technology providers scale in the US market.
Across May and June, the cohort will attend the in-person program in New York where they will promote their offering, meet partners, clients, investors and mentors to build their US market presence. The cohort will also attend the Lendit Fintech 2022 Conference at the end of May, which includes the Demo Day hosted by WEVE Acceleration and Austrade.
Austrade’s Steve Rank, Trade and Investment Commissioner New York, explained “Australia’s fintech sector will be showcased in New York when 9 of the best and brightest Australian Fintech startups visit in May.”
Change will be presented by Clayton Fossett (COO) and Brian Hodgdon (VP – Business Development and Customer Relations) and promote our Vertexon Payments as a Service and PaySim payments simulation and testing products.
Change will be joined by
Change is honored to have been selected along with such esteemed fintechs and looks forward to building our presence in the US.
Change Financial has been announced as a finalist for the sixth Annual Edition of FinTech Australia’s most prestigious fintech business awards, the Finnies.
FinTech Australia hosts the annual Finnies Awards which recognises excellence in financial services and technology in Australia. Change has been selected as a finalist for the Excellent in Payments category for 2022.
This is the second year in a row that Change being selected as a finalist, having made the finals for Deal of the Year award in 2021.
Change’s Chief Product Officer, Vinnie D’Alessandro, celebrated the announcement. “We are thrilled that Change has been recognised by FinTech Australia and the Finnies judges for the Excellence in Payments award. It’s recognition for the effort and investment our team has put into our Vertexon and PaySim products.”
The full list of finalists are available here. The Finnies Awards ceremony June 23rd at a gala event at the Forum Theater in Melbourne. Tickets will be available from the Finnies website https://www.thefinnies.org.au/
After onboarding multiple new clients to its global platform, Change Financial (ASX: CCA) is set to convert its recent product launches into new sales opportunities via Stockhead
Fintech payments leader Change Financial confirmed achievement of key platform milestones and new sales in an exciting quarter update this morning.
Among a number of operational highlights, CEO Alastair Wilkie flagged the successful launch of the company’s Vertexon platform, with additional products under development and a strong pipeline of new work opportunities – both in Australia and globally heading into 2022.
“We continued to grow our sales pipeline and see these opportunities progress through the sales funnel. During the quarter, we converted a significant number of opportunities into contracted revenue which will be realised in future quarters,” Wilkie said.
Importantly, Change commenced onboarding its first payments-as-a-service (PaaS) client in the lucrative US market during the quarter and is now pursuing multiple new clients leads across the US, Australasia and Latin America.
Accompanying that strong momentum, Wilkie and the CCA executive team have a clear strategic vision and key performance metrics to drive further growth in the year ahead.
Business highlights
Across the company’s operational objectives, CCA achieved a priority target in Q4 with the successful launch of Vertexon – a modern digital solution for banking clients to unify back-end process for prepaid, debit and credit cards.
During the December quarter, Change launched the Vertexon SaaS platform on Amazon Web Services (AWS) in Sydney, to service banks and fintechs in the Oceania region.
Delivered on schedule and on budget, the platform is highly scalable with the functionality for rapid global rollouts in response to client demand.
Along with that in-market launch, CCA also completed the beta phase of testing on the new Application Programming Interface (API) for PaySim – its SaaS-based automated payment testing solution that allows banks and fintechs to accelerate their development and product release cycles, the company said.
“The API enables clients to automate load, stress and regression testing to produce comprehensive results reporting and is the foundational component of PaySim’s software as a service offering,” CCA said.
As a measure of its product market-fit, PaySim is already in use by five of the top 10 digital payments companies globally, and marks a particularly exciting growth channel for Change.
Client momentum
In line with those key successes in product development, CCA was also able to convert its momentum into a number of new client wins.
Among them was the addition of a new fintech Mastercard prepaid card program in the US, which will deliver a minimum contract value of US$700,000 (~$1.0m) over an initial three-year term.
Client on-boarding is “well-progressed” and is expected to go live in the March quarter 2022, CCA said.
In addition, the company has secured US$1.3m (~$1.8m) of sales across its new product platform, with “US$1.1 million of Vertexon projects and US$200,000 of PaySim projects for existing clients”.
“Change expects further significant client wins to close in the third and fourth quarters of FY22 as opportunities progress through the sales funnel,” the company said.
The net outcome is that investors can look forward to a steady pipeline of growth for new revenue and cash-flow channels, as CCA continues to build its client base.
Importantly, around 55% of CCA’s revenue has been generated from recurring revenue streams.
Contracted ARR increased to US$4.7m, led by the successful onboarding of Change’s new PaaS client in the US market.
And as evidence of its strong momentum, Change highlighted that its sales pipeline grew by a net-24 opportunities in the December quarter to 158, while 23 new client opportunities were won and closed out.
“There was a significant increase in customer invoicing in Q2, particularly in December, which is expected to drive cash collections in Q3,” Change said.
With a scalable platform that services more than 16 million payment cards and 147 clients in 41 countries, CCA continues to carve out a profitable niche in the multi-billion dollar global payments market.
And following a transformative period in the second half of 2021, the company is set for a big year of growth in 2022.
https://stockhead.com.au/tech/change-financial-continues-to-drive-growth/
Experienced Australian based global fintech, Change Financial, welcomes the proactive approach adopted by Senator Andrew Bragg’s Select Committee in its final report on Australia as a Technology and Financial Centre tabled on Wednesday night.
The report’s recommendations for licencing digital currency exchanges and establishing a clear custody or depositary scheme for digital assets in Australia, gives credence to cryptocurrency as a viable currency and payment method. It would also provide cryptocurrency investors with some much-needed consumer protection.
The pandemic has accelerated the digitisation of finance while the global appetite for ease of use and efficiency in payment systems has increased from both the end customer and the provider.
The Bragg report’s recommendation that Treasury should lead a policy review to assess the viability of a retail, central bank-issued, digital currency for Australia would also put the nation on a par with many other countries in the emerging global digital economy.
A Finder survey, released on October 17, found a staggering 18% of Australians already own some form of crypto – one of the highest rates in the world.
Of the nearly 1 in 5 adults in Australia who own some form of crypto, Finder found bitcoin is the most popular coin; Ethereum is the second most popular coin while cardano came third. Two other cryptos Australians currently hold are dogecoin and binance coin.
Bragg’s bipartisan recommendations, if adopted, would bring some welcome regulation to this sector where currently there is hardly any enforceable rules and where local banks have largely avoided the sector.
The lack of regulations has constrained mainstream adoption of crypto, however we have seen countries in Latin America, like El Salvador, embrace cryptocurrencies and support growth.
In Australia, Change is currently working with several start-ups to bridge the gap between crypto exchanges and traditional payment infrastructure and networks using our Payments as a Service platform.
The ability to link a physical or digital card to crypto wallets is essential for driving payment growth and innovation in Australia. It will also open up opportunities for the “un” or “underbanked” as well as faster cross-border payments
Just like our current software as a service (SaaS) model that connects existing licensed banks with modern application programming interface (API) driven businesses and allows the end customer to use eftpos, Mastercard, Visa, and AMEX as well as connect to payment networks via Apple Pay, Google Pay, Samsung Pay.
The ability for businesses to embrace cryptocurrency relies on support for existing payments technology to power seamless transactions.
Change currently manages and processes more than 16 million virtual, credit, debit and prepaid cards worldwide, serving 136 clients in 36 countries.
By Vinnie D’Alessandro, Chief Product Officer of Change Financial