Since setting up in Australia in October 2017, Hip Money has been a Visa Pitchfest Semi-Finalist, Metlife Foundation Financial Inclusion Plus Second Runner Up and most recently a Top 10 Australian Startup in the Startup World Cup Finals.
As a Brisbane-based fintech company, Hip Money creates smart AI-powered savings technology to help eliminate debt as quickly and effectively as possible. Building its software around helping users uncover extra money that they can afford to save without feeling a pinch, it shows the value of applying that recommendation to eliminate debt (like a home loan), and then allows them to transfer that extra money with a simple swipe on their phone.
Founded by CEO Mark Zmarzly and CTO Lukas Soltys, the original idea behind Hip Money was inspired by the US fintech company Hip Pocket, of which Zmarzly is also the CEO. He was a 2017 Advance Queensland grant recipient, and has worked on growing the Hip Money team locally ever since. Now the company is working directly with the Bank of Queensland’s innovation department to bring AI-based savings technology to the market in Australia and then expand globally.
“Hip Money exists because 50% of Australians live pay cheque to pay cheque. And this issue isn’t going to improve because 60% of people have no savings plan,” says Zmarzly.
In their research they found that although people wanted to make better financial decisions, the existing solutions on offer only appealed to 10% of the population. Seeing this as an opportunity, they took to answering the question: “How could we analyse a user’s spending and cash flow to find ‘hidden’ savings opportunities and make taking action almost effortless?”
Hip Money was lucky enough to gain its first lot of funding while still in the idea stage through a Kickstarter campaign in which the team raised $30,000 and gained 1,100 prepaid users. A $100,000 Hot DesQ grant followed and as of 2018 the business moved to all revenue funding.
“Our plans are to integrate our technology with a large global core banking software provider so we can integrate with the online and mobile banking apps of their 4,000 clients.”
