Major telecom companiess, insurers and utility providers may be hesitant to join the cryptocurrency bandwagon in Australia. However, two domestic fintech startups have made it possible for cryptocurrency holders to pay any bill in crypto.
Cointree, a cryptocurrency exchange, and Gobbill, an automated billing platform, has come together to accomplish this herculean task.
More importantly, with the launch of this service, bill payments can be made with cryptocurrencies, irrespective of whether the end service provider accepts digital currencies. In this case, Gobbill acts as an intermediate platform, accepting funds and paying bills on behalf of users.
Shendon Ewans, co-founder of Gobbill, acknowledged that he has entered the cryptocurrency sector a bit late, but still believes that he has found a worth partner in Cointree.
I have traded, but not very successfully. That was the appeal of Cointree. I’m a novice and I’m surrounded by people at [fintech co-working space] Stone and Chalk, who are deep crypto specialists. Fast forward into the future and what we’re seeing is, like it or not, this will be part of our daily lives. Gobbill already let people pay bills from their cards or bank accounts, so now they can pay in cryptocurrency too.
AFSA (Australian Financial Security Authority) approval
Gobbill holds Australian financial services license, while Cointree holds AUSTRAC (Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre) license that obligates the firm to adhere to anti-money laundering and counter terrorist financing rules.
Ewans revealed that Gobbill is yet to generate any substantial revenue, but of late the firm has started billing their small business clients a fee to digitize invoices.
We’ve grown to a point where we’re now capital raising … for the first two years it was just my co-founder and I and it was a lot of research and development and testing. We only launched in the last year and we have a small number of users, but the partnership with Cointree and with our other with MyProsperity we’ll see more growth.
Cointree, which was founded in 2013, enables people to buy and sell Bitcoin in an easy manner. The firm has about 60,000 active clients and has facilitated over 100 million transactions.
Presently, the exchange accepts 40 types of cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Ether, NEO, Litecoin and Ripple.
Paying bills with cryptocurrency
While explaining about the service, Jess Renden, Cointree operations manager stated that the firm runs a service to pay bills without involvement of any other firm, but this partnership will make it easier for people to get acquainted with cryptocurrencies.
Last year alone we had about $100 million of bills paid in Australia and saw ten times growth in this payment feature.
Cointree has recently rebranded itself is aiming to take globalize its cryptocurrency exchange business. As a first step, Cointree plans to offer token-to-token trading in international markets. The firm also offers to obtain approvals from international regulators.
Renden does not foresee the sharp drop in the price of Bitcoin acting as a deterrent to the adoption of cryptocurrencies.
The market goes up and down. All of us would like a magic ball that could tell us when it will go up and down next, but we have a lot of different customers with different investment strategies. It’s not always dependent on price dips and highs. It’s something we’re becoming used to every day and there hasn’t been a complete drop off in traders, so that’s how the exchanges are still chugging along.
