Caroline Dewe

We are proud to introduce the “Grandma Test” for a Cashless Australia Treasury’s consultation on the new cash acceptance codes has closed, but the direction is clear: it is becoming increasingly difficult - almost impossible - for many Australians to live using cash. The draft framework offers limited protection: some supermarkets and fuel retailers, for in-person payments under $500. Beyond that narrow slice, “card only” and “online only” policies continue to spread across pharmacies, major retailers, hospitality, essential goods and services. That is where the “Grandma Test” matters. Can “Grandma” - a typical older Australian who budgets in cash and does not use internet banking - still: - do a larger fortnightly grocery shop, - buy clothes and Christmas presents for her grandkids, - replace a broken heater in winter, - pay for urgent medicines or basic medical equipment, - take the family for a simple birthday lunch, without being forced into digital channels she does not understand or trust? Right now, in too many real-world scenarios, the answer is no. 🚫 For many older and vulnerable Australians, cash is not nostalgia. It is a safety mechanism, a budgeting tool, protection against scams, and the only system they fully understand. The evidence backs this: Australians 65+ (especially 75+) are less digitally included and less confident with online banking. They consistently record some of the highest scam losses of any age group. Pushing this cohort into mandatory digital payments concentrates risk on the people least equipped to manage it. In a joint position paper from Social Impact Group and the Little Phil Foundation, we argue that any payments or “cashless” reform should have to pass a simple test: If an older Australian who relies on cash cannot reliably buy food, fuel, medicines, essential appliances, or participate in basic family and community life without being pushed online, then the reform fails. This is not anti-technology. We build technology. It is pro-accountability. Innovation that strands Grandma is bad design and bad policy. We are publishing our “Grandma Test” paper publicly so regulators, industry, consumer advocates and policymakers can use and challenge it. If you are working in this space and want a copy or to collaborate on strengthening protections, reach out. Commonwealth Treasury Seniors Rights Service

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Signal beats slogans every time. CreditorWatch is Australia’s innovative bureau with real adoption and real outcomes: ATO tax defaults, Tradeline, Invoice and full credit suite integration that finance teams actually use. What makes the difference is not just features. It is the customer and member network behind them. Every month our customers look up over 500,000 businesses and monitor over 2.4 million businesses. The ATO state there is about 2.7 million active businesses in Australia, which means our coverage now spans almost the entire market. Here is the truth about defaults: Lodging a default only matters when you have customers. If no one is watching, the network effects do not travel. In our network, those signals are seen, shared and acted on. That is the compounding power of CreditorWatch: * More customers participating means stronger signals and less noise * More monitoring means earlier warnings and faster decisioning * More real data in means better outcomes out Some talk about data. We partner with customers who create it, share it and act on it at scale. Join the bureau where network effects really matter. When your risk decisions ride on reality, not marketing, CreditorWatch delivers. #CreditorWatch #Innovation #NetworkEffects #CreditRisk #Fintech #Australia #B2BData #B2B #RiskManagement #DataStrategy

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🆔 Australia’s Digital ID is live. Why tech roadmaps need an urgent update. Parliament has approved an economy-wide Digital ID framework, letting banks, telcos and SaaS platforms rely on a single government-backed credential. At the same time, myGovID has rebranded to myID, signalling a shift from “government login” to a whole-of-economy identity layer. Three fast implications for tech leaders 1️⃣ On-boarding drops from minutes to seconds - TDIF-accredited logins can pre-fill KYC and AML data. 2️⃣ Fraud costs fall - Built-in biometrics and audit trails reduce chargebacks and manual reviews. 3️⃣ Privacy gets simpler - The Act locks in data minimisation and explicit consent, making board reporting cleaner. What I’m recommending to clients 🔹 Schedule a two-hour architecture review this month. Identify where Digital ID fits into your auth flow and what needs refactoring. 🔹 Map the uplift: higher conversion, lower fraud, shorter call-centre times. Bring hard numbers to Finance before FY25/26 budgets close. 🔹 Ask vendors now if native Digital ID endpoints are on their 2025 roadmap. 💬 Want to swap notes? DM me for a short call. Happy to share lessons from recent identity rollouts, no sales pitch. #DigitalID #TechLeadership #CyberSecurity #DigitalTransformation #Australia

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BNPL compliance is now mandatory. Are you prepared for ongoing oversight? ⚡ With ASIC's new regulations now in effect, licensed BNPL providers face ongoing challenges around fee caps, responsible lending assessments, and unsuitability monitoring. The reality check: Manual compliance processes consistently show cracks. Financial service providers report spending hundreds of hours on regulatory monitoring with lots of manual overhead and risk burden. Here's where smart providers are getting ahead. Our latest insights reveal how forward-thinking BNPL providers can turn compliance headaches into competitive advantages using digital product lifecycle governance solutions that enable: ✅ Fee cap monitoring to prevent breaches before they happen ✅ Automated policy reviews with comprehensive audit trails ✅ Target market performance tracking that actually drives product decisions ✅ Predictive compliance analytics to spot risks in advance The bottom line: While your competitors scramble with spreadsheets, you could be leveraging compliance data to optimise product performance and customer experience. As ASIC Commissioner Alan Kirkland noted, these reforms will "improve protection for Australian consumers." The providers who see opportunity in this challenge will lead the next phase of BNPL evolution. Ready to see product governance as a competitive advantage? 👇 Read our full breakdown of How Skyjed Empowers BNPL with New Regulatory Requirements https://bit.ly/44IGEXM #BNPL #Compliance #FinTech #ASIC #ProductGovernance #RegulatoryTechnology #BuyNowPayLater #FinanceInnovation

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Platform Engineering Melbourne Meetup is on again next Thursday at 6pm. Empowering Your Agents with the Model Context Protocol Jack Walkinshaw dives into the transformative potential of Model Context Protocol (MCP) and explore its role in the evolving landscape of Agentic AI. This session will provide an insightful walkthrough of MCP, highlighting common pitfalls, opportunities, and practical use cases for integrating it into daily workflows. The presentation will also be accompanied by a demo of an MCP server built in-house, with a peek under the covers. https://lnkd.in/ggT_-FJK

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A huge win for Hnry customers in New Zealand today, as we announce our new ‘Scan to Pay’ feature, in partnership with Volley. 🎉 Our customers will now be able to generate QR codes in the Hnry app, which their clients can use to make direct payments via Internet Banking. No card terminals required, no Invoices necessary - and no exorbitant fees or subscriptions either - just 35c per transaction. All the payments get reconciled in Hnry automatically, with the exact right amount of tax already deducted and paid! This feature will be game-changing for sole traders who take payments in person - Personal trainers; small retailers; psychologists - the list is endless. We’ll be rolling out this feature to all New Zealand customers over the next few weeks, and we can’t wait for them to experience how fast, affordable and secure it is taking payments with Scan to Pay! Thanks to James McCann and Jack Callister from Volley for working with us on this, and to all the awesome Hnry team members who helped get this live! 🙌 Find out more here: https://lnkd.in/exiv6kGX https://lnkd.in/eB6cp9Ut

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Want to find $3,000 in your budget? Start with your UberEats habit. The Australian Financial Review published an eye-opening analysis on food delivery apps, and if you're serious about fighting cost-of-living pressures, you need to read it (I’ll share the link in the comments.) Australians are paying 36% more when ordering through delivery apps compared to picking up the same food themselves. That $40 order becomes $54 before delivery fees. We're spending an average of $60 per week on food delivery in Australia, that’s over $3,000 annually on convenience alone. And while we're paying more, restaurants are earning less. They hand over 33% of every order to platforms like UberEats, DoorDash, and Menulog. One Sydney owner admitted that if app orders exceed 60% of his business, he'd operate at a loss. These are the same businesses that barely survived COVID lockdowns. They adapted, fought to stay open, and now we're inadvertently undermining them by choosing convenience over community. I know I'd rather cook at home and occasionally eat out at local restaurants to genuinely support them. When you dine in or pick up directly, you're investing in the economic fabric of your community. Cutting back on food delivery is one of the easiest ways to fight inflation in your personal budget. That $3,000 a year could go toward your emergency fund, your super, or your next holiday. Our local economy depends on small businesses thriving, not just surviving. Let's support them properly.

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As New Zealand's digital economy grows, businesses that don’t go mobile risk fading into the background. With over 70% of Kiwis using mobile apps for everything from banking to shopping, being mobile-first is no longer optional; it’s how you stay relevant. With the global mobile app market projected to hit $935 billion by the end of the year, startups and enterprises alike are chasing the engagement, scalability, and ROI that mobile solutions promise. But when it comes to how much an app costs to build in New Zealand, the answer isn’t simple. Costs vary based on complexity, features, platform, and even who builds it, and missteps in planning can quickly spiral into unexpected expenses. Curious how much your app could cost and what to expect? Don’t miss our full breakdown; the insights might just save your budget. 👇 https://lnkd.in/erz2KBBi #TheNineHertz #MobileAppDevelopment #appdevelopmentcost #mobileappdevelopmentcost #appdevelopmentcompany #newzealand

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🇦🇺 Thrilled to share this piece in the The Australian Financial Review by Tess Bennett about Sovereign Australia AI and the journey we're embarking on to build Australis - Australia's own foundational language model. I couldn’t be prouder to be building this alongside my mate and Co-Founder Simon Kriss This isn't just about building another AI model. It's about ensuring Australia maintains its digital sovereignty and voice in an increasingly AI-driven world. We shouldn't be dependent on decisions made in Washington, Silicon Valley, Beijing or Europe about how AI understands and represents our Australian culture, values, and way of life. Yet to achieve this isn’t easy and it takes scale to compete, so we’ve made a massive investment in compute and have acquired 256 NVIDIA Blackwell B200 GPUs hosted in NEXTDC's secure Australian data centre in Melbourne, and managed by our colleagues at SHARON AI What makes me particularly proud of what we’ve done so far: ✅ Ethical from the ground up - We're committing $10M to compensate copyright owners, working WITH creators rather than against them ✅ Built for Australia, by Australians - From the ground up, built, trained and inferenced onshore, here in Australia, and compliant with our privacy and copyright laws ✅ Customers & Partnerships In Place - We partnering with some amazing Aussie organisations to help them solve some of Australia’s AI challenges. The partnerships we can speak about include ACS (Australian Computer Society), UNSW Canberra & GT Systems Australia, with more to follow! The path to digital sovereignty doesn't require billions, it requires vision, ethical principles, and the determination to ensure Australia's voice isn't lost in the global AI conversation. We're proving that sovereign AI can be built responsibly, affordably, and with respect for the creators whose work makes it possible. Australia's digital future should be in Australian hands. Let's build it together. 🚀 Special thanks to Craig Scroggie, Andrew Leece, Kieran Habojan, Dan Mons, Sudarshan Ramachandran, Rhod Brown, Brett Bonser, Melissa Hamilton, Josh Griggs, Rhett Sampson and so many more. #ai #sovereignai #llm #gpt #innovation #australia #australian https://lnkd.in/gnF8N3mR

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NSW SPLASHES THE CASH There's a budget this week in NSW and treasurer Daniel Mookhey is blowing the dust of the state's wallet with $80 in new innovation funding and the creation of the Investment Delivery Authority. It's purpose, "...to remove friction from large-scale investments in digital infrastructure", and that's probably a good thing. We just need thousands of businesses chomping at the bit to start using all this new infrastructure, and Crunchbase tells me there are 7,953 software organisations in Australia today. James Riley has the details in InnovationAus.com - https://lnkd.in/dyYenS7M Follow Software Australia IA today and help Australia become a global digital leader.

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We are pleased to confirm that we have made Payments NZ’s API Centre Payment Initiation v2.3 API Standard available for third party connection.   Our Chief Information Officer Russell Jones (he/him) says this latest release means there will be more ways for approved third party providers to support customers with different options for regular payments:   “We know both existing and prospective third parties are really excited about this release and we’re looking forward to seeing more options that enable customers to make payments in a safe and secure way.”   “We’ve also seen significant interest from third parties following our recent announcement that we’ll waive fees for standard open banking APIs and we hope to announce a number of new third-party relationships in the coming weeks.”   Customers looking for more information about open banking can visit the Westpac NZ website to learn more. https://lnkd.in/gnYJTqZn. #TogetherGreater Sarah Hearn Marty Sellwood Dan Symons Matthew Graham Ara Krishnaraj Kimberley Walker Joanne Freeman

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