Five payments innovations down under

So I just finished presenting as keynote at CeBIT Australia’s
Future of Payments conference, when the day was completed by a start-up challenge (you have a lot to answer for
innotribe!).

The prize on offer was a free stand at the main CeBIT conference
for the winning entry, and five firms were given just seven minutes to pitch
for the prize (you have a lot to answer for Finovate!).  the five firms were:

• Pushpay;
• Ingogo;
• Controlabill;
• Cryptophoto; and
• Call Journey.

Pushpay is a simple app that
wraps up the payment experience into a simple service for people who regularly visit
certain stores or donate regularly to certain charities.  The service provides a fully PCI compliant
card payment to be delivered by mobile, and enables any organisation to have a
mobile payment solution that is secure and designed for the mobile consumer experience.

Pushpay's Smart Payments from Pushpay on Vimeo.

Ingogo is a little bit like the UK app Hailo, where you are geolocated using your
mobile and the nearest taxi finds you upon request.  No payment is needed as the app is setup with
your card details for payment to be taken automatically, so all you do is catch
the cab, get to your destination and jump out.

Controlabill is designed to make direct debits simple, using a cloud based service where customers
can just add the billers they need to pay.

Cryptophoto is designed to provide an additional, secure, mobile friendly authentication service
for the customer.  Once registered, when entering
secured websites, cryptophoto sends a message to the mobile telephone of the customer
asking them to verify it is them by confirming the photo on screen via their mobile.  Simple, and aimed to overcome the issues of
phishers and man in the middle attacks.

Finally, Call Journey is a cloud based solution for recording and analysing all calls, in order to
prove best advice compliance and track possible fraud or other activities.

Three worthy judges:

• Andrew Davis, Global Head of e-Commerce Strategy and Innovation, HSBC;

• Andrew
  Rothwell, VP Channel and Product Management, Tyro Payments; and

• James
  Bibby, Solution Specialist Financial Services and Public Sector,
  Microsoft;

listened to the firms’ five pitches and awarded Ingogo the
prize (probably because they wanted to find a taxi home fast after all that listening).

Interesting to see five innovative payments related firms in
Australia, and always nice to see innovative start-ups although I would have
expected something a little bit more disruptive than the five seen here.

By way of example, when I talk about innovations in Europe I
think of Alior and mBank in Poland, Fidor in Germany, Deniz and Akbank in
Turkey whilst, in the USA, I would point to Moven and Simple and more.  All of these are mobile social financial services,
and that’s the bit that was missing from the five here.  Maybe next time, we’ll see something more innovative?

Anyway, I always enjoy a start-up pitch competition and all
five of these are young, earnest companies that deserve applause for their entrepreneurial
spirit.

Roll on disruption!