Fintech app Finch has raised $2.25 million in seed funding to grow out its team, further its product development, and accelerate customer acquisition.
Founders Toby and Shahirah Gardner would not disclose the investors, but said the funding came from a strategic investor and Australian VC after a six week capital raising process.
“We carefully selected a handful of investors to approach that we felt could really help us grow and provide access to things like subject expertise, product, revenue and portfolio synergies that would allow us to do that quickly,” Shahirah said.
“Both investors have proven experience working with fintechs and helping them scale rapidly, and we’re confident we have the right ingredients to build something really special.”
The app, winner of the best product demo title at the Envestnet | Yodlee fintech incubator in the US, was launched in July with its key function to allow users to pay friends instantly, easily split bills, and run group tabs, however the founders believe this is just the first step to getting young Australians thinking about their finances by creating a financial insights platform around the payments function.
Shahirah told Startup Daily at the time, “In the long term what we’re trying to do is build a single financial platform for millennials, anywhere. As millennials move through their life stages, their goals and objectives change. Millennials today are very focused on this group who are really into going out, meeting with friends so on.
“Finch today reflects meeting those needs and making it easier. But tomorrow those millennials may start thinking about their long-term financial goals, starting a family, careers, buying a home and we’ll look to continue supporting them through features that support those particular life stages.”
So far, Shahirah said Finch has “thousands” of early adopters, with most coming through word of mouth. As it looks to grow, she said Finch will be looking to raise between $10 million and $15 million in a Series A round.
The raising comes as Commonwealth Bank, Westpac, and National Australia Bank yesterday announced they are working together on a joint venture around payments, and will be launching a payments app to enable instant payments for consumers and businesses.
Named Beem, the app will enable individual users to request payments from others or split a bill, and also allow businesses to take instant payments from customers.
The app will be available to anyone with a debit card issued by an Australian Authorised Deposit-taking Institution, Beem will initially have a sending limit of $200 a day, or $6,000 per month, with a monthly receiving limit of $10,000.
The banks stated that the joint venture behind Beem will be independently run and seeking new participants to join and help bring to life new features and products, including a digital wallet.
Also raising funding is Donesafe, a startup that has created a cloud-based system to help businesses including McDonald’s, Suncorp, and NAB manage their health and safety obligations.
Coming from a number of local angel investors, the $1.2 million will go towards helping the startup expand into the US with the establishment of a sales team in California.
Cofounder Matthew Knee, “We decided to explore the US as an option almost 18 months ago, and we quickly learnt US companies have just the same frustrations with clunky expensive safety software.”
The startup has brought on the state of California as a customer.
Image: Toby and Shahirah Gardner. Source: Supplied.
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