Open-banking fintech Qippay raises $5M for transtasman push
What's the deal? Auckland-based fintech QippayDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → has secured a US$3.24M equity investment from Australian investment vehicle All Roads Wholesale FundDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, which takes a 25% stake in parent company Qippay GroupDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →. Chief executive Ashley Lake-Johns described the round loosely: "You can call that seed or Series A capital." The funds are arriving in tranches, with the transaction expected to complete this week.
What's the endgame? Founded in 2021, Qippay builds technology connecting bank-to-bank payments with customer-consented financial data, offering an alternative to cards and direct debits. The money will fund hiring, new financial and data infrastructure, and a proprietary large language model to enrich open banking data. Lake-Johns plans to grow the six-person team to 12 to 15.
Why this investor? Lake-Johns said Qippay weighed other offers, including one close to an acquisition, but chose All Roads to keep control. "We looked for the right type of investor that wouldn't necessarily mean we lose control," he said. Fund founder Dave Palmer joins the board alongside Lake-Johns and co-founder Wayne Deas.
The hard path: Qippay pursued compliance from the start, becoming an accredited requester under the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment and striking bilateral agreements with major banks. "We took the hard path," Lake-Johns said. It avoided riskier methods such as screen scraping — a stance that put it behind rivals using both approaches.
What's next? Qippay will build its capabilities for New Zealand businesses first, with longer-term ambitions in Australia. "We want to build the financial infrastructure and the data infrastructure for New Zealand," Lake-Johns said. Data will be stored locally under strict regulatory compliance.
The signal: New Zealand has lagged in embracing pure open banking, and Qippay's bet is that compliant-by-design infrastructure will win as the market matures. The raise rewards a slower, rules-first approach in a sector where shortcuts remain common.
Read more: startupdaily.net, finextra.com, businessdesk.co.nz
Image credit: Håkan Dahlström
