Hello: Clever-clogs trip on debit

Ian Rogers

Hello Clever founders Gavin Nguyen (L) and Caroline Tran

A couple of school buddies with scant background in banking and payments are having a crack at doing debit differently in Australia. 

It may end up a case of doing it daringly, then disastrously.  

Or maybe shockingly successfully? It’s a bit early to tell for newly-launched Hello Clever.  

Plenty of payments posers have appeared then fallen fallow, then disappeared, over the decade.  

The global banking cartel synchronises domestic and cross-border payments to suit their own interests and to crowd out even the most capable and best-capitalised upstarts. 

There are fragments of room in the cluttered industry landscape for Hello Clever. 

But colonising and breaking out in banking?  In Australia?

Hello Clever are being strategic but also pretty brave: their offer is for merchant service fees as high as 15 per cent, with four per cent nearer the norm.  

Caroline Tran, one co-founder of Hello Clever started her spiel to Banking Day with “Obviously …..” but what followed was not, just arguable.

“Obviously the issue is to help young people to manage their money and get rewards every time they spend.

“Financial inclusion is helping young people manage money.“Some of the merchants we deal with require same day payment.”

Hello Clever are signed on to employ the still dormant PayTo branch of the New Payments Platform, via Azupay.

“We are developing a new use case for PayTo,” Tran said, centred on point of sale purchases debiting consumer accounts via PayID.

Resulting in a better working capital outcome for the merchant.

Hello Clever play on a tricky terrain, since the terms, explained above, heavily favour incumbents.

Hello Clever this week announced its seed funding raise of A$4.5million. With founder funding they’ve been trading since January.

Hello Clever last week completed “the first PayTo payment in Australia with the RBA”.