New Zealand’s first service-centric affordability platform, Genoapay, aims to launch in Australia in early 2018, in the wake of its record-breaking NZD$1million accelerator funding success in August.
Having just rounded out its first year of operations, Genoapay, one of six startups in the inaugural cohort of Icehouse’s Flux Accelerator programme, is now available in over 210 merchant stores around the country, including a number of Pitstop, Carters Tyres, Midas and Hometunes operators, and upwards of 60 independent automotive, dental, veterinary, and hair and beauty stores.
Supported by leading local financial service providers Debitsuccess and Finance Now, the platform seeks to make fundamental services such as car maintenance and dental care more accessible for Kiwis, by splitting their bill across 10 interest-free weekly instalments.
Currently signing on five new merchants daily, and approximately 100 new users per day, Genoapay founder and CEO Shaun Quincey says forecasts show the platform is on track to be available in upwards of 1,000 stores by Q2 2018, and enabling transactions for over 80,000 qualified users.
Beyond this, Quincey says the company is also getting set to launch into the Australian market in early 2018 – and is exploring the prospect of a US expansion soon after.
“I am delighted with our current growth trajectory, and we are learning every day how to grow faster and add more value to our merchants in the process. I am most excited about the reaction from our users when they try the product for the first time and we hear the words ‘simple’ and ‘easy to use’. When building a software payments product in financial services, feedback like that is absolute gold,” says Quincey.
Ongoing work to refine the Genoapay technology mean the online credit approval process for customers has now been reduced to less than two minutes.
A series of senior hires have further fuelled Genoapay’s rapid growth – with the recent appointment of Phil Purchase (ex-90 seconds) to the role of National Sales Manager, Tommi Paraten (formerly of Ora HQ) as CMO, and Senior Developer Kent Simpson making the move from Orion Health.
At board level, payment industry experience comes in the form of directors Phil Ellison of Finance Now, and former Paymark CEO Mark Rushworth, with advisory team member Graeme Ransley, founder of early Icehouse mobile payment solutions success story M-Comm, among the steering team.
The company plans to recruit for a number of sales and customer success roles, to support its ongoing expansion.