Gobbill is pleased to announce that we have teamed up with NAB to fight against scams and fraud.
We are pleased to announce that Google is our strategic growth partner and supporting us with Google’s Cloud Program as a Scale tier Artificial Intelligence (AI) first – equity backed company.
Google is supporting Gobbill as we explore the next phase of our R&D providing us with ~AU$500K over 2 years to AI financial credits, technology, resources and its community needed for us to grow .
Gobbill’s AI journey started back in mid 2015 when we applied Deep-Learning text-in-the-wild to automate bill payments and machine learning models for detecting fraud.
In our early days, we were based in our AI & Data Science partner Silverpond ‘s co-working space called The Pond (2016).
Gobbill’s journey has been an exciting one working with Silverpond and with plenty of support from Microsoft. Together, we have explored use-cases and what’s possible using AI over the last 8 years.
Gobbill CEO, Shendon Ewans presenting at 2018 and 2019 Applying Artificial Intelligence and Deep Learning Conference – Melbourne. Above and Below.
Australian AI submit 2019: Silverpond presenting examples of Australian startups using AI such as Gobbill.
We’re excited about our new strategic partnership with Google and their support in our next phase of Australian AI research and development.
Sep 19, 2021
Small businesses make up 96% of the 2.4m businesses actively trading in the Australian economy. These businesses have less than 20 staff, employ 44% of the workforce and generates 35% in GDP. Small Businesses are the backbone of the Australian economy.
The financial year 2021 saw an increased number of new businesses by 3.8% in terms of net growth (source: ABS Aug 2021). This is great news especially in certain growth sectors such as ‘Construction’, ‘Professional, Scientific and Technical services’, and ‘Health Care and Social Assistance’.
However, since the NSW and VIC extended lockdowns, recent data from Xero and Gobbill is showing a slowdown in the ‘time to payment’ between Jun to Aug 2021. Small business income has also dropped by 12.5%, payment defaults have risen in last month for the first time since May 2020, while bank loan deferrals increased six-fold according to CreditorWatch.
Gobbill is a secure bill payment automation company for Australian small businesses. During these uncertain times, the company has found its clients are more in control of their payments using Gobbill instead of bills being automatically debited (direct debited). It’s a nasty surprise if you are not expecting the amount or timing of a debit against your bank account. Small business owners can deferred bill payments using Gobbill with a few clicks. Checkout https://gobbill.com for more details.
There are winners and losers from this pandemic but the lockdowns only exacerbate the divide between those that have to close their businesses and those that can still trade.
The outlook leading up to this Christmas is bleak for small businesses that cannot or have restricted trading imposed on them.
Melbourne, Australia 24 March, 2020 – Fraud detection and payment automation company Gobbill and Chinese mobile payment company AirPay, have embedded Alipay and WeChat payments into a popular media platform to allow users to pay Australian bills with China’s favourite payment methods.
Over one million users will have the capability to pay Australian bills with WeChat Pay and Alipay, with a market-first feature called “ToPay” in popular Chinese media app, Today Australia.
The ‘ToPay’ feature will allow Today Australia users pay and categorise bills including phone, utilities, school fees, council rates and more, within a single app.
Users will also receive rewards scheme, such as discount meals via popular Asian food delivery platform Hungry Panda.
AirPay Head of FinTech Simon Tse said: “We are thrilled to announce our industry collaboration with Gobbill to provide Australian-Chinese a seamless and secure way to pay bills via smartphone. Our new payment platform “ToPay” helps us open new verticals, in addition to our wide QR payments coverage in high-end retail brands such as Gucci, Victoria’s Secret, Sneakerboy, Champion, Glue Store owned by Kering group, Valiram group, LRG group, Hanes Brands and Next Athleisure”.
“Chinese sales across retail are down 30-50 per cent this month, and we predict it will be a difficult financial year for many companies. Our next goal is to drive one million Chinese consumers to merchants via the everyday usage of our app” said Tse.
Gobbill CEO and co-founder Shendon Ewans said: “The timing is right to bring the two technologies together to process Chinese payments in Australia. We expect the convenience of making payments through a media app and associated rewards as an advantage.”
The payments function will be enabled by Gobbill as part of the company’s growth into the broader payments sector, particularly in connecting global markets with seamless and secure payments. Using AI automation, Gobbill forensically extracts data from invoices, checks for fraud and executes the payments.
For more information, contact via email [email protected] or [email protected]
-ENDS-
About Gobbill
Gobbill is a fraud detection and payment automation service designed for small businesses and busy households to save time, maximise cash flow and protect against scams and fraud. The end-to-end AI platform gives users control over payments with minimal effort. Gobbill forensically extracts data from invoices, checks for fraud using its proprietary “Know Your Biller™” fraud detection technology and automatically executes payments.
Cybercrime and invoice fraud has increased 7 fold in the last 3 years. UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) calls an “epidemic” of 3.8 million fraud cases reported in 2019. FBI is concerned with the issue growing to an estimated $5 trillion in losses by 2024.
Leveraging over 3 years of R&D, Gobbill can pay bills issued from over 40,000 Australian providers. The company is a Microsoft Startup sponsored company, a partner of the Australian Government’s cyber safety initiative, AI partner of Silverpond and member of Stone & Chalk. Gobbill is an Authorised Representative (1261196) of Australian Financial Services Licence Holder (448066). Gobbill’s UK office is based at the Royal Bank & NatWest FinTech Accelerator.
About AirPay Financial Technologies
AirPay is FinTech based in Melbourne with offices in Shanghai and Sydney providing one-stop mobile payment and marketing solution for merchants to accept and promote QR payments. AirPay is also integrated with Shopify to allow online retailers to accept Alipay and WeChat Pay seamlessly. The company is invested by SwiftPass Technologies, a wholly owned subsidiary of a China listed company and is a member of FinTech Australia.
About Today Australia
Media Today Group (also known as “Today Australia”) http://mediatodaygroup.com is Australia’s largest Chinese Internet “new media” platform delivered through an in-App experience, WeChat Official Account and WeChat Moment.
The group owns Internet media in five major cities: Sydney Today, Melbourne Today, Queensland Today, Adelaide Today, Perth Today, and two vertical Internet platforms: Australian Real Estate Today and Tourism Today.
Since its establishment on April 29, 2010, the group has been adhering to the business philosophy of “best-looking news and most practical information” and has gradually become the most influential and brand-value composite Chinese media group in the Australian Chinese community.
Gobbill is pleased to announce that it has been accepted into the prestigious NatWest and Royal Bank FinTech Accelerator.
With major locations across the UK, our current base will be the Royal Bank of Scotland – Accelerator Hub, St Andrew Square, Edinburgh.
The programme offers coaching, investment strategy review and alignment to the bank(s), we look forward to working closely with Royal Bank & NatWest, which provides a range of entrepreneurship support.
About the NatWest and Royal Bank of Scotland Fintech Accelerator
The bank offers its Fintech Accelerator as part of its Entrepreneurship initiative to those that focus on the financial technology sector respectively.
https://www.business.rbs.co.uk/business/business-services/entrepreneur-accelerator.html
Former fraud investigator for the National Disability Insurance Scheme says too few people are dealing with fraud in the system. $2B could be in fraud per annum in the $22B per annum scheme.
New feature update as of 6 January 2020
We are listening to clients’ feedback and implementing features almost every business day. You can imagine there would be plenty of small and large changes being made daily.
Here are a few key ones:
Additional options to override the payment date – A client asked to have more control over when specific Billers are paid, and this new feature is now available on our Premium and Business Plans.
Benefits:
Other recent features prior to 6 January 2020 ———–
Pay ASAP is a preference switch to enable the payment of invoices as soon as possible (ASAP) when a bill arrives in Gobbill. This feature was requested by one of our bookkeeper clients to clear invoices and bills as soon as they are received instead of paying before the due date or paying late.
[BETA] Payroll Sweep and Pay is the ability to clear payroll payments for any client and any Australian bank account through Gobbill. Instead of having to manage multiple Internet Banking login access authorities, logins and passwords, our accounting and bookkeeping partners can access one point trigger payroll approval and to clear payroll payments. Performing it through Gobbill doesn’t affect your clients’ Internet Banking daily limited which can alleviate a big issue on certain days when many payments have to be made on the same day.
[BETA] Bill and Payroll approval flows is the ability for small business users as well as accountants and bookkeepers to trigger approvals for bills/invoices and payroll. Authorizers can simply respond via email to approve without the need for logins or apps.
New dashboard designed for bookkeepers and accountants to manage their clients’ bills/invoices within Gobbill. Working with AAT members and our Partners, we’ve listened and developed a new dashboard to help support the work activities of bookkeepers and accountants. The dashboard helps to collate and group all clients’ accounts payable invoices and manage the timing and cashflow of payments. It is currently being trialed by a beta group.
NDIS dashboard for Plan Managers and households with NDIS self-managed participants. NDIS Plan Managers and Self-Managed Participants are able to see their invoices relating to NDIS all in one area. Their Gobbill account can support the whole bookkeeping practice (portfolio of clients) or whole-of-household with all bills and invoices. We see Gobbill as a whole-of-household solution for bills (including NDIS invoices) making life admin easier for those who are participating in the NDIS. A new dashboard is available to users on the Premium and Business Plans. Just ask [email protected] to activate it for you. There’s no extra charge or fees because it is all part of your existing Plan.
Bank statements can be uploaded directly for account verification and setup. A request from a Partner, you can now link a new bank account in Gobbill and upload bank statements for verification immediately. This is in addition to emailing your bank statement to your own @gobbill.com email address.
Gobbill can now pay over 40,000 Australian billers and uses robots to fetch bills stored online. Some billers will send a notification that a bill is ready online. Instead of clicking on the link, forward the notification to Gobbill to do it for you. Gobbill currently has robots which will safely and securely fetch from online sources bills/invoices from their associated portals. E.g. City West Water, Sydney Water, Energy Australia, AGL Energy, Xero invoices and more..Robot automation saves you time and also helps to prevent you from clicking on malware or being directed to a fake website.
Gobbill is now able to accept multiple invoice/bill attachments and multiple types of documents in an email. Previously, Gobbill required each invoice to be on its separate email.
Documents awaiting processing by Gobbill due to fraud check or text recognition are displayed as in Gobbill as “Pending documents”.
Bill payment cutoff time is now midnight instead of 6pm. This is the cut off time for bills to be included in the next business day’s payment processing. If a bill is sent into Gobbill and accepted before midnight, it will be included in the payment processing the next business day or scheduled before the due date depending on the circumstances and preferences.
Microsoft has not only continued but increased its level of support for Gobbill on its Microsoft for Startups program until late 2020. Gobbill runs extensively on Microsoft’s Azure cloud and also utilises Artificial Intelligence (Machine Learning) services within the platform and eco-system. Since launching several years ago, Gobbill has maintained high availability in its Production environment as well as using Azure for it Research and Development infrastructure, Testing and Quality Assurance environments that the company has maintained since 2015.
At this stage of the business, it makes sense for Gobbill to join the Microsoft Partner Network Support (Australia) and commence initial co-selling activities which is all part of the strategy of Microsoft’s $500m investment in its startup program. The investment allows startups to piggyback on Microsoft’s existing sales force. Gobbill has benefited greatly from its support from early days of proof of concept through to today, being used commercially by businesses throughout Australia. Microsoft says it loves startups, and well the feeling is mutual.
CEO & Co-founder of Gobbill, Shendon Ewans said “Without Microsoft’s sponsorship and support especially in the early days, we would have struggled to get Gobbill off the ground. Looking back, it was a great decision my CTO and co-founder Quentin Marsh made by selecting Azure and pitching the idea of Gobbill to the 2015 Microsoft BizSpark team in Sydney.”
Thank you Microsoft (Australia and Singapore). You know who you are that have helped us on our journey.
*** NEW STAFF ***
We are pleased to announce the appointment of Michael Pollitt as Gobbill’s Business Development Manager focusing on the company’s UK growth.
Michael is a veteran startup and scaleup CxO in the UK and Australia. He has over 20 years of ICT experience working in London for Deutsche Bank, Hewlett Packard, Compaq and startups in the field of robotics, payments and data analytics. He is also a passionate blues musician and singer! Welcome onboard Michael.