Māori ‘open banking’ start-up Blinkpay signs up Sharesies

Wednesday, 27 September 2023

Adrian Smith (Ngāpuhi) says founder Daniel Karehana wanted BlinkPay to be recognised as a Māori company to provide inspiration to Māori entrepreneurs.

Sharesies has signed up Māori open banking start-up BlinkPay to help investors get money out of their bank accounts, and invested in shares more quickly.

BlinkPay is one of a growing number of companies developing open banking technology which connects users’ bank accounts with third-parties, allowing for things like faster transfers of money.

Using banks’ normal transaction processes, it would take as much as nine hours to transfer money from a bank account to a Sharesies wallet, said Leighton Roberts, Sharesies co-chief executive.

There were times when Sharesies investors wanted, or needed, to move money much faster to take advantage of investment opportunities, he said.

The BlinkPay service is only available for Westpac and Bank of New Zealand (BNZ) customers at the moment, as ANZ and ASB have not yet enabled BlinkPay to connect with their systems.

Banks have come under fire for dragging their heels on implementing open banking, and it is one of the focuses of the Commerce Commission’s market study competition in the banking sector.

Roberts said ANZ and ASB had committed to being ready for open banking payments by May next year.

Adrian Smith (Ngāpuhi), BlinkPay chief product officer, said by the time that date rolled around, New Zealand would be six years behind the United Kingdom on open banking.

Smith worked for a decade for Barclays Bank in London, including helping implement open banking for the bank, seeing first hand the successes and, as importantly, the mistakes.

“The UK fell into a lot of issues as they went along. There’s always that when you are trailblazing,” he said.

“What can we learn from those geographies that have done things, and what things make sense for operating environment in New Zealand? What are the things we should be going after? We try to bring that lens to everything we do.”

BlinkPay was launched in 2021 by Daniel Karehana (Ngāiterangi, Ngāti Ranginui, Ngāti Awa and Ngāti Proa).

He died of cancer late last year aged 47.

”We’re trying to uphold his dream of taking the company forward,” Smith said.

Part of that dream was to be seen to be a Māori-owned and operated technology company.

“One of the things Dan was very keen on was he wanted us to be obviously a Māori company. He was very keen to try and get cut-through in the technology industry because we are very under-represented in the technology industry,”

Smith said Karehana gifted Smith and Riddell shareholdings in the company as part of his succession planning, in case he was not able to recover from his illness.

Faster money transfers is something Sharesies’ investors have been wanting for a long time, says Sharesies' co-chief executive Leighton Roberts.

Other shareholders include Ngāti Awa Asset Holdings, and Ngāi Tahu Capital (through Whale Watch Holdings).

Sharesies has had an active year.

It has launched a savings account, and also a KiwiSaver scheme, which it intends to morph into a sophisticated DIY scheme letting savers pick and choose individual shares to build their own portfolios.

Roberts said so far, the savings account had about 43,000 savers with $140 million of savings.

The money was held in a “big” registered bank, which Sharesies has not named.