ASIC has granted an Australian financial services licence to a wholly-owned subsidiary of fintech Change Financial, opening the way for the company to offer its payments-as-a-service product in the local market.
Change’s PaaS business includes physical and virtual card issuing, transaction processing for major card schemes and digital payments. It has clients in Asia, Latin America and the United States.
Its target market is banks, other financial institutions and fintechs.
It has several client card programs in development in New Zealand, where it was granted a New Zealand financial service provider licence last year. Clients include First Credit Union, Police Credit Union and Westforce Credit Union.
The granting of an AFSL to Change Financial Payment Services Pty Ltd allows the company to finalise accreditation as a Mastercard principal issuer for prepaid cards in Australia. It plans to issue digital and physical prepaid cards through a partnership with Mastercard.
Change chief executive Alastair Wilkie said in a statement: “As an agile non-bank card provider in the Australian market, we will lower the barriers to entry for fintechs and non-bank lenders that wish to provide digital and physical cards.”
The company earned revenue of US$8.3 million in 2021/22 and made a loss of US$2.5 million.