Australia-based payments app for university students QPay has picked up $570,000 from Sydney Angels, weeks after launching its QPay MasterCard.
Investments to the round also came from Sydney Angels Sidecar Fund 2.
QPay offers students with a mobile app and MasterCard to purchase products such as merchandise, tickets, club memberships and textbooks, among others. The platform is used by over 150,000 students across Australia and the UK, in universities including University of Sydney, Melbourne, Queensland, University of Oxford and Cambridge, according to the company.
This funding comes weeks after QPay launched its MasterCard to support the app and capture millennials as they enrol for tertiary education. There are 4,305 students are on the waiting list for the card.
QPay head of strategy Moe Satti said, “If you’re an avid coffee drinker, expect a free coffee from your local coffee shop or if you love shopping, your next purchase may come with a 50% discount. Students are always looking for the best deal for the least amount of effort – it’s a balance between relevance and convenience, which is what QPay does really well and is the reason why students have come to associate QPay with convenient and value purchases.”
QPay initially raised $400,000 from Sydney Angels in 2016 for its first funding round. Since the previous investment, the company has performed more than $11m in transactions for students, and the company expects to double this by the end of the year.
Earlier in the week, fellow Australian company Kasada picked up a $2.5m funding round to support the expansion to the US. The cybersecurity company detects and mitigates malicious web traffic and protect websites from fraud and data scraping.
FinTech investments in Australasia have grown six-fold since 2014, with there being $735m deployed to the region last year, according to data by FinTech Global.
Copyright © 2018 FinTech Global
