Constantinople co-founder Di Challenor
Great Southern Bank is among a handful of prominent investors that have collectively poured $32 million of seed funding into a new payments fintech set up by former Westpac executives.
The Brisbane-based bank yesterday declined to comment on a A$7 million investment it has made in Constantinople Holding Company Pty Ltd, a Sydney firm building a proprietary payments and funds transfer platform using blockchain technology.
Mystery surrounds the key elements of Constantinople’s business case, with directors and investors in the company refusing to comment publicly on its plans in the local banking market.
However, the company’s promoters are winning support from big investors including local fintech venture capital specialists, Square Peg Capital and Airtree Ventures.
Together, the two big venture capital players have tipped more than $20 million of seed capital into Constantinople.
Constantinople is the brainchild of former Westpac executives Di Challenor and Macgregor Duncan, who are directors of the company along with Square Peg partner, Paul Bassat.
Great Southern’s investment gives the customer-owned bank a substantial presence on the nascent company’s register.
It is one of the largest strategic technology investments made by the bank, which since 2017 has spent on average $15.7 million a year upgrading its own technology and systems.
A Great Southern spokesperson last night declined to comment on the strategic rationale driving the bank’s investment.
“I really appreciate you giving us the opportunity to get you a comment, but unfortunately we won’t be able to in the timeframe,” the spokesperson said.
When asked by Banking Day how much time the bank required to prepare a comment on the investment, the spokesperson said – “I wouldn’t wait for us - the people we need are out of office and difficult to track down so can’t give you an accurate timeframe on when I can talk to them, sorry.”
Di Challenor was the managing director of global transaction services at Westpac until December last year.
She resigned to take up several board positions and to kick-start the Constantinople business.
According to internal Westpac documents leaked to the Australian Financial Review in November 2019, Challenor was the executive who alerted AUSTRAC to systemic transaction monitoring and AML breaches that eventually resulted in the major bank paying a record $1.3 billion civil fine.
Challenor is also a former director of NPP Australia and the buy now pay later provider, Zip Co.
Duncan also departed Westpac towards the end of 2021 where he had been responsible for a wide range of functions including mergers and acquisitions, strategic investments and data development.
In the last three months Banking Day has made several approaches to Duncan to learn more about the business but he has declined to speak about the company’s plans.
Constantinople has applied to register intellectual property in Australia, including a trademark with IP Australia.