Two Australian fintechs selected to help develop payments solutions for the world

Two Australian fintech companies have beaten entrants from across the world to be selected among five finalists in a global payments industry challenge, where they will work to develop new cross-border solutions for thousands of banks.FinTech Australia members Assembly Payments andCurrencyVue have been selected to take part in the SWIFT gpi Industry Challengein Singapore on 13-14 September.As part of this challenge, the two well-established financial technology companies will work with 30 banks to develop new services for SWIFTs more than 11,000 financial institution members across 200 countries, leveraging its SWIFT global payment innovation (gpi) service.Two winners will emerge from the Singapore event and will be featured at Sibos SWIFTs global flagship event at Toronto in October this year.SWIFTis the worlds leading provider of secure financial messaging services, enabling its members to communicate securely and exchange standardised financial messages.SWIFT gpi is being promoted as the largest change in cross-border payments over the last 30 years, including offering same day credit to end beneficiaries, end to end real-time status tracking and transparency on fees and exchange rates.FinTech Australia CEO Danielle Szetho said: Were really pleased to see that Australian payments fintechs have been selected to play a key role on the world stage developing new innovative solutions for many banks around the globe.The selection of Assembly Payments and CurrencyVue for this event reflects the growing leadership of the Australian fintech payments industry, particularly in cross-border payments.For instance, a research report by KPMG and the Committee for Sydneyreleased in July found that payments was one of three areas seen by industry leaders where Australia has the potential to lead the world.CurrencyVue CEO Matthew Tyrrell said: The CurrencyVue team are extremely excited about the opportunity to be involved in Swifts gpi industry workshop.Our vision is all about removing the friction in international payments and FX hedging so we see our capabilities being very much aligned to the Swift gpi value proposition.Getting our solution in front of decision makers at 30 of the largest global banks is obviously a great opportunity for our business."

 CurrencyVue CEO Matthew Tyrrell

Assembly Payments CEO, Simon Lee added: There is a massive upheaval in the global banking environment and its encouraging that major institutions are looking to the fintech community to help solve their problems.We look forward to combining with others from across the world to improve the experience of making international payments.The Scaling the FinTech Opportunity for Sydney and Australia report by KPMG and the Committee for Sydney found that Australia had 128 payments and digital currency companies more than any other fintech sub-sector. The next highest category was lending (80 companies) and wealthtech (77 companies).The report states fintech Australian startups are targeting the payments area because "Australian consumers are early adopters of mobile technology, with very high usage of contactless payments...coupled with the advanced nature of digital/mobile offerings from established banks and payments providers."Eddie Haddad, Managing Director of SWIFT Asia Pacific said: SWIFT gpi has been met with so much early success and promise, the banks now see the initiative as a primary platform to innovate on.Consequently, SWIFT is organising this global industry challenge to showcase cutting-edge fintechs working with the worlds most progressive banks to develop new services.I expect the Challenge will help solve real world problems because SWIFT gpi banks and fintechs will be co-creating overlay services over the gpi rails by using its unique features to enable different use cases in cross-border payments.To see the original announcement from SWIFT about its industry challenge, please click here.