Credfin’s CEO and co-founder and Head of Payments, Brent Wardlaw, had been well established in the fintech scene before turning his attention toward the potential for Credfin. December 2015 saw the beginnings of leading payment services Squarepay; founded by Brent’s dedication, grit and innovation, he saw the need for direct debit solutions within the digital lending market. So, with a goal in mind and the expertise to match, Brent began Squarepay.
Not long after, he co-founded MIMO tech, an end-to-end service encompassing customer relations, underwriting, loan management and more. MIMO tech provides these services for many leading vendors in the market.
Brent was drawn toward Credfin early and plugged Credfin into MIMO tech, along the way becoming CEO and co-founder. He has poured his expertise into Credfin, helping to make it one of the leading data aggregators in the market to date.
Now with a distinguished list of clients who are multi million and billion dollar companies, Credfin has established itself in a decorated field. Their clients are the 400,000+ individuals who have seamless experiences every month using Credfin.
A Unified API to Shape Experiences
Credfin’s vision is simple but big: for all digital lending to be real time. Credfin provides a unified API that opens up access to a suite of market leading products: real time bank data collection and categorisation, payments and electronic identification. Backed by these products, digital lenders can create seamless services and experiences for their customers.
Credfin as a one-stop-shop
Credfin’s transaction data products include income and expenses checks, account owner checks, and transactional data. Not only do these products boost efficiency and are always up-to-date, they also help businesses meet their Responsible Lending Obligations.
Payment Products range from bank to bank payments, smart card payments and smart direct debit payments. Credfin’s products utilise automated processes where a business can set the timing, amount and if need be a frequency of a repayment, and pre check bank balances before taking a payment.
Credfin’s two identification products; KYC & AML checks, and ID scan & biometrics check; allow for frictionless customer onboarding by verifying a user’s identity in seconds.
Why Digital Lenders are Choosing Credfin
Along with Credfin’s simple yet powerful unified API, lenders are choosing Credfin for their 99.99%+ uptime, instant service usage, secure processes, and ability to choose from two integration solutions that suit the business.
This choice is between the deep integration of Credfin’s API and the easy-to-implement iFrame. Though both retrieve the same data, the benefits differ slightly. Credfin’s API solution allows for seamless and deep integration with a company’s systems, delivering fast results. On the other hand, the iFrame solution is perfect for businesses without a dedicated IT department and is simple to understand and implement.
Australia’s Open Banking Climate
The newest concept within Australia’s banking industry is Open Banking. Open Banking aims to give power and control to the consumer through banks and lenders becoming more transparent with processes. Open Banking gives a consumer the ability to share their banking data in a secure way to accredited third-parties, while keeping control of their own data in a way they have never been able to before.
In August 2019, the Australian Government passed the Consumer Data Right (CDR) legislation, giving consumers control over their data. July 2020 saw the implementation of CDR in the Big 4 Banks: NAB, Commonwealth, Westpac and ANZ. February 2022 is the current deadline for all other banks and lenders to comply with CDR; however, at the time of writing, the current laws are still being decided on. Open Banking will soon be a part of everyday life in Australia, and is set to be phased into the energy and telecommunications sectors as well.
Credfin and Open Banking
Open Banking is set to make Credfin’s vision of real-time digital lending a reality. The transaction data provided through Open Banking can be retrieved by a data recipient within mere seconds from the accounts API, which will enable near real-time delivery of financial insights and data analysis to their customers.
Credfin acts as an intermediary for the seamless connection between the consumer and lenders, therefore Open Banking will enable faster decisioning by Credfin’s lenders due to the near real-time delivery of financial insights and data analysis which is used in the vendor’s risk assessment.
Credfin is a big proponent of consumer data rights, therefore their services are designed around giving a consumer control over the sharing of their financial data with selected vendors in a seamless manner to remove the stress associated with financial applications.
Globally Recognised
A recent accomplishment for Credfin was winning the “Best use of Open Banking in consumer credit/lending offerings” in the Global FData Open Finance awards. Established in 2018, the FData Global Awards serve to recognise excellence and innovation in fintech, awarding companies that actively deliver Open Banking to the market and empower customers to take control over their financial lives.
With this win behind them, Credfin will be put on the fintech map and be able to partner with lenders and fintechs who are increasing competition, driving innovation and bringing customer centricity to the forefront of digital lending as the Consumer Data Right expands in Australia.
Looking Ahead
Credfin’s news doesn’t stop there. They are planning to apply for the UN Pacific project; a project modernising the finance landscape in the Pacific Island nations. Credfin is also planning to take their services to international markets such as New Zealand and South Africa.
Credfin is starting to be nominated for numerous awards and become a name in the competitive fintech landscape, alongside billion dollar entities like Yodlee, Plaid, Experian and Xero.
Not only is Credfin integrating payments within their system, they are also integrating eKYC and anti-fraud frameworks, and are continuing to make these processes smooth and seamless. They are also advancing what is arguably the most advanced analysis and detection system for transaction data.
With their growing name and innovative services, Credfin is set to disrupt the Fintech industry, in Australia and across the globe.