Australia saw a strong uptick from 2017, recording US$600 million across 28 deals, according to the KPMG Pulse of Fintech report.
After a drop in 2017 investment levels, 2018 is Australia’s second-highest year on record. Investment activity was broad, across a number of sub-sectors, such as payments, lending, regtech and open banking. The largest transaction for the year was the US$245 mil acquisition of Avoka, a transaction management platform by Temanos.
Australia’s open banking regime gaining interest globally
Australia gained a significant amount of interest from investors in 2018 with respect to its open banking and open data regime. This is because the country is developing its open banking policies as an umbrella regime focused on customer data as a right.
In the VC space, Australia-based Data Republic raised US$22 mil in Series B funding in Q4’18 led by Singapore-based Innov8 and Singapore Airlines. Futhermore, we have seen ANZ recently announce participating in a Series A funding round from UK open banking platform, Bud.
In tandem with the development of its open banking regime, Australia has also seen increasing interest from fintech investors in areas that enable open banking, including solutions focused on data sharing, consent management and digital identity verification.
