<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*YiqBizpSHqTjZ7I31ljM1Q.png" /></figure>We are thrilled to share that Hello Clever has been named the winner of the “Emerging Fintech Organisation of the Year” award at the highly anticipated Finnie Awards 2023.This esteemed recognition is a testament to our dedication to innovation and growth in the dynamic field of real-time payments.The Finnies Awards, organised by FinTech Australia, are renowned for highlighting excellence and innovation in the fintech industry.<blockquote>“We are delighted to receive the ‘Emerging Fintech Organisation of the Year’ award at Finnies 2023,” said Caroline Tran, the visionary founder of Hello Clever.</blockquote>“We started <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/helloclever/">Hello Clever</a> with one simple goal in mind we will be pushing for new innovation, empowering our customers to always be clever in their journey.”<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*V-8m2FDa0gRemP7LgVkRMw.jpeg" /></figure>Hello Clever is transforming payments through its innovative real-time payment platform, utilising PayID and PayTo. By enabling businesses to process payments and settle funds instantly, Hello Clever empowers them to thrive in the real-time economy.With funds settled in real-time, our solution minimises risks associated with fraud, eliminates chargebacks, and reduces payment delays, offering businesses a faster, more secure and more efficient payment solution.In addition to our real-time payment capabilities, Hello Clever has prioritised innovation and client growth.The integration of our unique instant cashback rewards program sets us apart, enabling businesses to enhance their customer loyalty and retention.This strategic approach not only fosters long-term customer relationships but also provides businesses with a competitive edge in the market, incentivising customers to pay in real-time with the reward of instant cashback, right at the time of payment.“Hello Clever is committed to driving innovation and empowering businesses through our real-time payment solutions and instant cashback rewards features,” said Caroline Tran.<blockquote>“We are dedicated to continuously evolving and building our clients’ success in the rapidly changing payments landscape.”</blockquote>The Finnies 2023 Award marks a significant milestone in Hello Clever’s journey as it continues to pioneer advancements in real-time payments.The company remains dedicated to pushing boundaries, delivering innovative solutions, and supporting its’ clients’ growth in the dynamic payments space.For more information about Hello Clever and our real-time payment solutions with instant cashback rewards, visit <a href="https://www.helloclever.co/">www.helloclever.co</a>.<img src="https://medium.com/_/stat?event=post.clientViewed&referrerSource=full_rss&postId=7aef226de82d" width="1" height="1" alt="">

Hello Clever takes home the “Emerging Fintech Organisation of the Year” Award at the Finnies 2023

<h3>Hello Clever &amp; Choco Up Partner to Provide Fast Payments and Flexible Financing to Australian E-Commerce Businesses</h3><figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*eXTOTbhpGQ_4yrvuYBMfLQ.jpeg" /></figure>Sydney, Australia, 15 May 2023 — Hello Clever, the Sydney-based fintech company that empowers e-commerce businesses with a real-time payment solution and built-in instant cashback rewards, has announced a strategic partnership with <a href="https://choco-up.com/">Choco Up</a> to provide flexible financing solutions for Australian-based e-commerce businesses and startups.The partnership will provide a comprehensive offering that includes instant, reliable payment processing and flexible growth capital.According to data from Statista, Australia’s e-commerce market is projected to reach US$43.21 billion in revenue by 2023, with a CAGR of 10.4% from 2023 to 2027.This growth presents a significant opportunity for e-commerce businesses, and Choco Up aims to help them succeed by providing access to flexible, fast capital with easy-to-understand terms.Hello Clever’s real-time payment solution allows businesses to receive fast, reliable payments in real-time, 24/7, removing payment settlement delays and chargebacks while mitigating fraud risks associated with traditional methods. The payment solution also offers instant cashback rewards to drive customer loyalty and adoption of the payment solution.Choco Up, Asia’s largest revenue-based financing and growth solutions platform, offers fast and seamless non-dilutive financing with a flexible repayment mechanism.This partnership allows Hello Clever to bring Australian e-commerce businesses to Choco Up for growth capital. In turn, Choco Up will refer Australian e-commerce businesses to Hello Clever for real-time payment solutions.“Our partnership with Hello Clever allows us to empower Australian e-commerce brands to grow their business with our founder-friendly funding solution,” said Brian Tsang, Co-Founder and COO of Choco Up.“We are working closely with Hello Clever to create a complete solution that gives e-commerce merchants seamless access to funding with automated repayment and growth analytics to help them identify opportunities for growth.”“We are excited to partner with Choco Up to offer Australian e-commerce businesses a comprehensive solution to meet their financial need,” said Caroline Tran, Co-Founder and CEO of Hello Clever.“By combining our payment solutions and Choco Up’s flexible financing options, we can help e-commerce businesses grow their business and reach their goals.”With this partnership, Australian e-commerce businesses can receive funding from Choco Up while also utilizing Hello Clever’s real-time payment solution to accept payments instantly, 24/7. By leveraging the strengths of both companies, Australia’s e-commerce industry is poised for even greater growth in the years ahead.Learn more about Hello Clever’s real-time payment solution <a href="http://helloclever.co">here</a><img src="https://medium.com/_/stat?event=post.clientViewed&referrerSource=full_rss&postId=f79566b5c089" width="1" height="1" alt="">

Hello Clever & Choco Up Partner to Provide Fast Payments and Flexible Financing to Australian…

<h3>Hello Clever is amongst the finalists for Finnies 2023 — The Oscars of Fintech!</h3><h3>Hello Clever is incredibly proud to be shortlisted as a finalist in the annual Finnies Awards this year which will be held at The Forum, Melbourne on 31 May.</h3><figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*Z-cBeTv5CtE1OzX2sVK7UQ.png" /></figure>It has been an exciting few weeks for our team at Hello Clever with our Co-Founder winning ‘<a href="https://helloclever.co/blogs/hello-clevers-ceo-wins-2023-women-leading-tech-award-by-atlassian-158fe513690a">Women Leading Tech Award 2023’</a>, to being a finalist in ‘Emerging Fintech of The Year’ at The Finnies 2023 — the most prestigious awards that celebrates the success of the Australian fintech ecosystem.Since launching in 2022, Hello Clever is dedicated to providing a seamless payment experience to our customers, using cutting-edge technology to ensure transactions are fast, secure, and reliable. We are committed to delivering innovative payment solutions that stay within our core values:🥑 Customer is Our Obsession💡 We create Clever Ideas🚀 We reinvent and we simplify👬 A team that’s empowered💜 Build with heart and balanceWe understand that in today’s fast-paced world, time is of the essence, and our payment solutions are designed to help our customers ‘be Clever with their money’, and to make the process as easy and stress-free as possible.Our team has worked tirelessly to develop and implement the first PayTo, the NPP’s instant account-to-account payment transaction in Australia. Our product has been recognised across multiple industries and we will continue to deliver the best payment experience to our merchants and customers.Being named a finalist in the ‘Emerging Fintech of The Year’ is a tremendous honour and we are grateful for the recognition. It motivates us to continue pushing the envelope and finding new ways to innovate. We believe that the future of payments is bright, and we are excited to be at the forefront of this industry.The Finnies will take place in Melbourne on 31 May 2023. We’d like to thank Fintech Australia and the award judges for having us and we look forward to seeing everyone at the awards night to celebrate another year of success in our ecosystem. Congratulations and good luck to <a href="https://www.startupdaily.net/topic/events/here-are-the-finalists-of-the-fintech-australia-finnie-awards-for-2023/?utm_source=linkedin&amp;utm_medium=organic&amp;utm_campaign=startupdaily&amp;fbclid=IwAR1f1uXdbuZ-s-jv4ALb5IlrYtB_qzMqt9cDFygjSDNB3m6DYnQ1sRXfn6Y">all the finalists!</a>Hundreds of merchants are using Hello Clever’s payment stack. Find out how we can help your business — <a href="https://helloclever.co/get-in-touch">book a demo.</a><img src="https://medium.com/_/stat?event=post.clientViewed&referrerSource=full_rss&postId=abd84a086ef1" width="1" height="1" alt="">

Hello Clever is among the finalists for Finnies 2023 — The Oscars of Fintech!

<h3>In a world where everything is instant, waiting for payments to settle is now a thing of the past.</h3>In the past six months at Hello Clever, we’ve expanded significantly to process thousands of transactions a month, worth millions. The notable growth has added to the rise of adoption with NPP whose customers are reaching <a href="https://www.rba.gov.au/speeches/2022/pdf/sp-so-2022-05-03.pdf">90 million accounts</a>.A key innovation provided by the NPP is PayTo whose infrastructure has the ability to enable fast, real-time and provide consumers and businesses to authorise third parties to initiate NPP payments from their accounts.The launch of PayTo will modernise the exisiting ‘direct debit’ (DE) system by giving customers more control over their DE transactions, reducing the chance that the payment will be mistakenly made and guarding against many types of scams.The recent merger of NPPA, BPAY and eftpos to form Australian Payment Plus (AP+) should result in a more unified pathway to support the transition of DE system to PayTo in the near future.<blockquote>Quoted in an article published by <a href="https://www.itnews.com.au/news/payto-is-live-at-50-financial-organisations-592506">ITNEWS</a>, a AP+ spokesperson added that it’s already starting to see some early use cases emerge in the market such as Hello Clever, whose merchant customers utilise the PayTo capabilities.</blockquote><figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*yjrCbReqswMI9nlUEC9pbA.png" /></figure>With over 50 organisations now live with PayTo, banks and financial institutions have met the April activation deadline, making real-time payments a reality for the majority of banking customers.Hello Clever is driving the push towards real-time payments by integrating PayTo into fast, secure, low-code payment solutions for businesses. With Hello Clever’s PayTo solution, businesses can now offer their customers a seamless payment experience that gets them paid in real-time.<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*IArmDI_s95cEL-KOzP28Lg@2x.png" /></figure>Businesses no longer have to wait for days to receive payment settlements, which is typical with traditional methods like direct debit. Instead, funds are settled 24/7, every day — including weekends and holidays.What makes Hello Clever stand out is its instant cashback feature. It is the only fintech that lets businesses offer PayTo as a payment method and can reward customers back in real-time with instant cashback.Cashback rewards are preferred over points and can incentivise customers to make timely payments, while boosting loyalty and driving sales.<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*SW98tnP7jMesXx9xFEaETw@2x.png" /></figure><blockquote>“Real-time payments are transforming the way businesses operate, and Hello Clever is proud to be leading the way,” said Tran, CEO of Hello Clever.</blockquote>“Our fast, frictionless PayTo solution, combined with instant cashback rewards, is revolutionising the way payments are made in the real-time economy.”Hello Clever’s PayTo solution provides businesses with simple, low-code integration of PayTo, to enable fast and secure real-time payments from customers, while offering them a rewarding payment experience.Low-code integration with PayTo means that businesses can easily get set up and start taking advantage of real-time payments and customer rewards. Businesses can explore Hello Clever’s PayTo API <a href="https://docs.helloclever.co/api-reference">here</a>.Whether it’s for bill payments, e-commerce transactions, or any kind of payment, Hello Clever is the solution for businesses looking to thrive in the real-time economy.<a href="https://helloclever.co/payto">Learn more about Hello Clever’s PayTo solution here</a><img src="https://medium.com/_/stat?event=post.clientViewed&referrerSource=full_rss&postId=6f0ef00ba9bf" width="1" height="1" alt="">

Pioneering the Drive Towards Real-Time Payments: Hello Clever’s simple PayTo solution

<h3>Caroline Tran — Co-Founder and CEO of Hello Clever has won this year’s Women Leading Tech Award in Fintech. Additionally, Caroline is also selected by <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/swiss-entrepreneurship-program/">Swiss EP — Swiss Entrepreneurship Program</a> to participate in “Women Entrepreneurs Week” in Zurich, Switzerland this March.</h3>The Women Leading Tech Awards are fiercely competitive, and part of a wider initiative to help create the change that is needed to address the inequalities within the technology sector. This year, the awards are bigger and better than ever with 217 finalists spread across the 24 categories — including 15 new ones.<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*2aa34mmj3cjVoWZy4MojYA.png" /></figure>The Women Leading Tech Awards celebrates the extraordinary contributions of women in technology across Australia. This initiative was created to support gender parity and representation across the tech industry and shine a light on current inequalities.In a public statement, Caroline said “Last year, only 3% of VC funding went to businesses founded by women. We are nearly at the end of the first quarter now, this number needs to increase immediately and I’m doing everything in my part, in my capabilities to support female founders who are creating impact in their fields.”<blockquote>“All of this is not possible without our team at <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/helloclever/">Hello Clever</a>. We’ve been able to develop groundbreaking products that are transforming our industry and making a positive impact. We will be continuing to do so, forever!”</blockquote>Hello Clever is Australia’s first payment gateway to support PayTo for secure pre-authorised payment technology. As an ecosystem, Hello Clever has been designed to make fast payments (PayTo and PayID) possible for individuals and businesses. Hello Clever utilises open banking, fast payments, and AI technologies to put together an end-to-end experience for shopping, bill payments, and spending management.Check out the full list of these amazing women: <a href="https://www.bandt.com.au/here-are-all-the-winners-from-the-women-leading-tech-awards-%f0%9f%8f%86/">https://www.bandt.com.au/here-are-all-the-winners-from-the-women-leading-tech-awards-%f0%9f%8f%86/</a><img src="https://medium.com/_/stat?event=post.clientViewed&referrerSource=full_rss&postId=158fe513690a" width="1" height="1" alt="">

Hello Clever’s CEO wins 2023 Women Leading Tech Award by Atlassian.

<h3>Hello Clever partners with Una Brands to bring ‘Buy-To-Earn’ solutions to APAC’s #1 e-commerce aggregator</h3><h3>Hello Clever, Australia’s leading real-time payment and loyalty solution, has announced its partnership with Una Brands, a Singapore-based e-commerce aggregator, to introduce instant shopping rewards to consumers.</h3><figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*8ds1fcraPP-n9gQpA6ewig.png" /></figure>The strategic partnership will help Una Brands grow in Australia and take advantage of the New Payment Platform (NPP) which has access to more than 13 million users.Customers of the aggregator’s three major brands NorthDay, ErgoTune and EverDesk will be able to pay for their purchases and earn instant rewards through Hello Clever.The cross-border collaboration is one-of-a-kind in Asia, opening the door to millions of Australians and creating a better ecosystem for the customer where they can pay now and get rewarded now.Hello Clever CEO and Co-Founder Caroline Tran said: “Hello Clever is proud to be partnering with Asia’s leading e-commerce business Una Brands. Together we’ll bring customer’s access to smarter and more rewarding ways to pay, which helps Una Brands deliver on its consumer promise to always put its customer first.”Una Brands CEO Kiren Tanna said: “We’re excited to work with Hello Clever as our scale-up loyalty payment business partner. The partnership aligns with our values as being tech-driven and digital-first as we continue to embark on our mission of acquiring and growing well-loved and enduring brands in Australia.” Launched earlier this year, Hello Clever has over 30,000 active users in its Buy-To-Earn ecosystem and has built partnerships with over 1,000 retailers.In July 2022, Hello Clever became the first Australian payment gateway to support PayTo for secure pre-authorised payment technology. As an ecosystem, Hello Clever has been designed to make fast payments (PayTo and PayID) possible for individuals and businesses. Hello Clever utilises open banking, fast payments, and AI technologies to put together an end-to-end experience for shopping, bill payments, and spending management.Founded in 2021, Una Brands raises $85M USD in total funding, is APAC’s leading multi-channel e-commerce aggregator whose mission is to shape the future of e-commerce by acquiring great brands and growing them into global, well-loved, and enduring household names. Una Brands has since acquired and operates &gt;20 e-commerce brands across six countries.<img src="https://medium.com/_/stat?event=post.clientViewed&referrerSource=full_rss&postId=b380c919ce81" width="1" height="1" alt="">

Hello Clever partners with Una Brands to bring ‘Buy-To-Earn’ solutions to APAC’s #1 e-commerce…

<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*KrbE5oAXFJqdaD7M33lHqg.png" /></figure><h3>This year, Hello Clever celebrated our first year in market and two years since our founding in 2021.</h3>2022 has been an exciting year as we’ve been working diligently to launch our suite of product including Hello Clever Consumer and Hello Clever Payment and this has led to thousands of transactions we process every month. And in the new year, we’re expected to see this number to rise north of five times.Over the past three months, the public and private market have seen a restructure where a lot of companies in our industry have been facing difficulties to keep up with the rise of factors like interest rates, monetary or fiscal policy, government edicts or commodity price swings. We are lucky to still retain our position in the market with the ability to innovate, build new capabilities and secure long-term prospects while at the same time deliver the sustainable, profitable growth our stakeholders expect from us.We are a team of pioneers and entrepreneurs who are motivated by the needs of our solution and overcome the challenges with expertise and determination.We’re proud to officially share with you our 2022 highlights and what’s next for 2023.<h3>Our Capital Raise Announcement</h3>We successfully closed our seed round at $4.5M AUD in September with participating from leading investors include Vectr Fintech Partners, Yolo Investments, Boson Ventures, CrossFund and sophisticated angels such as Peter Warren Family, Daniel Johnson and Ken Cheung.This marked the start of our growth journey and rapid product development in 2022 with the onboarding of more than 1,000 merchants and 40,000 customers who are loving the Hello Clever brand<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*qsI9xSO861I7psipWhU5cw.png" /></figure><h3>Our Product Announcement</h3>We continue to ship products at rapid speed with the launch of Hello Clever 2.0 in the new year and Hello Clever Payment across multiple markets. New features are being delivered every three weeks and our biggest achievement to date was to be able to mark the first EVER PayTo transaction in Australia that no one else had been able to.Merchant Dashboard: our merchants have the ability to register an account with Hello Clever automatically and integrate our payment gateway at the record time of five seconds. Merchant integration platforms include Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento, OpenCart and Customised API with BigCommerce to be live in 2023.<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*QbmRqTPiF8mbfvFlJI1WhA.png" /></figure>Merchant API: Universal no-code API to connect with real-time payment in seconds. This product is suitable for merchants that require customised integration such as telcos, financial services and government departments.<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*67Q_0TnvIGzMGyMctMPnGg.png" /></figure>Payment Gateway: Hello Clever is Australia’s first company to utilise the new payment platform &amp; introducing the next generation of rewards — the all new ‘buy to earn’ payment.Hello Clever generates a PayID and utilises the use of PayTo, Credit/Debit Card and QR code at checkout page allowing merchants to receive payments instantly at a very low cost with no chargebacks, zero reconciliation and a safer way for their customers to pay whilst giving them an instant cashback which is the integral part to drive traffic to our merchants.<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*ykq1DlqmKjRtPll7S8UV7Q.png" /></figure>Compliance: This year we earned our highest level of compliance — Level 4 which is for businesses that process fewer than 20,000 e-commerce card transactions, or those processing up to 1 million total annual card transactions.<h3>Our Team Announcement</h3><figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*lYxqkUWaF5d5zY7psc86SQ.png" /></figure>We’re fortunate to have onboarded additional four engineers from Vietnam and one Senior Product Manager based in Finland to start developed next phase of product roadmap as we head toward the end of 2022 and prepraring for a massive growth in 2023.As of October 2022, we have 25 employees (both FTE and PTE) working across Growth, Design, Technology and Marketing from 11 cities of 7 countries and of which, more than 30% of our employees are female working in Growth and Technology. We’re very proud of our diverse team and employees who have been working tremendously hard these last few months to focus on our GTM strategy and product deadlines.What’s next in 2023 and beyond? The answer is simple, growth and expansion — we look forward to 2023 as we’re on the mission to bring world’s class products to our customers and thank you for being there with us from day one. So much more to come from here.<img src="https://medium.com/_/stat?event=post.clientViewed&referrerSource=full_rss&postId=3b62827a7a99" width="1" height="1" alt="">