Fintech startups dominate Product Hoist top five from August

Fintech is hot right now in Australia as this month’s Product Hoist top five shows. Three very different approaches to disrupting the finance sector in Australia feature, alongside a way to customise on your shirt and find randomly useful websites.

1. FirstStep: mobile app that lets you automatically invest your loose change from everyday electronic transactions into a diversified, low-cost investment portfolio. 

A mobile app that lets you automatically invest your loose change from everyday electronic transactions into a diversified, low-cost investment portfolio. Currently in closed beta, FirstStep is part of the University of Sydney Incubate program with a mission to lower the barriers to entry to investing in the share market. FirstStep users need only a bank card and a smartphone to start making regular passive contributions of their spare change to a diversified investment portfolio. For example, if a movie ticket costs $17.50, FirstStep rounds up the purchase to the nearest dollar and automatically invests 50c in the user’s portfolio.

2. FanTees: wear your passion on your shirt.

FanTees allows you to customise the logo on shirt (or hoodie, singlet, mug or sticker).You can search over 2000 designs already on the site or send them your custom design and they will print it for you.

3. ShareGift Australia: make a difference with your shares… donate now.

ShareGift Australia makes it easy for you to support the community by donating your shares. Just over $1 million worth of shares have been donated so far to over 390 charities.

4. Random Useful Websites: click a button, find a useful website.

Another project from Mathew Carpenter, the guy behind viral successes such as Ship Your Enemies Glitter and Abusive Elmo on Demand. Random Useful Websites is basically a landing page with a button that takes you to a random useful website. So far that button has been clicked more than 1 million times!

5. Living Room of Satoshi: pay any Australian bill with bitcoin

Named after the mysterious founder of bitcoin “Satoshi Nakamoto”, this Brisbane based startup has managed to overcome the tax hurdles surrounding bitcoin in Australia and continue to allow Australians to pay their bills using bitcoin for free. The startup also collects some interesting data, for example, Tuesday is the most popular day to pay bills and credit cards are the most popular type of bill being paid with bitcoin.

Every month StartupSmart shines the spotlight on Product Hoist’s most popular startups.To submit your startup, head over to producthoist.com.au.

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