Pause Awards - Australia's leading innovation awards - has shone a further IWD spotlight on the gender pay-gap by discouting awards entries for female founders by the same amount as the published pay differential.Previous Fintech Pause winners have included female-founded Verve Super, Dom Pym, founder of Up Bank, and WeMoney, who stormed home with 4 awards in 2023.[pictured: Christina Hobbs, Zoe Lamont, Alex Andrews]

WeMoney - the personal finance app that helps reduce debt & bolster financial literacy - gave the Fintech sector a much-needed Christmas boost by taking home 3 gongs at the Pause Awards presentation night in Melbourne.In what has been a tough year for many Fintechs, WeMoney's holistic approach to helping consumers source better deals whilst improving their overall financial health, especially during periods of high financial pressure, clearly resonated with the judges.The Pause Awards is a spin-off of Pause Fest, which for many years was Australia's Equivalent to SXSW, and recognises startups and scale-ups across multiple sectors.

The Fintech sector is battening down the hatches as rising interest rates & inflation have put the brakes on investment in the space.However, in amongst the gloom there are some positive stories emerging.Parpera - the banking app for sole traders and small businesses - recently re-launched with a raft of new solutions, having previously been forced into pausing operations as their core banking providing ceased trading.At the recent Fintech Australia 'Intersekt' conference, Parpera founder Daniel Cannizarro sat down with Ben 'Fintech' Ford to discuss both his own & Parpera's roller-coaster journey to date.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y65SSTdt_Zc&list=PL4ITSyTPE_IvPIXDNcQ4Fnwvu-xpIhRXM&index=37

Bunq founder, Ali Niknam shared some of the Dutch neobank unicorn's secrets, as well as elaborating on the bank's 2022 financials, during a packed session at Money 20/20 Europe.Niknam revealed that quarterly profitability for Bunq was achieved at the end of 2022, despite the distraction of a landmark battle (which Bunq subsequently won) with the Dutch regulator over best practise when onboarding new customers for AML / KYC.The next battle for Bunq is the US, where it will avoid an acquisition strategy and instead aim to get licensed and build from the ground up.Full report below:https://assets-global.website-files.com/63b43f001c7774d38d5f3a2d/6480abaf1363b6fe9f50fbe2_2022_Annual-Report.pdf

Australia's Fintech Industry's 'night of nights' - the Finnies Awards -  highlighted that, while times have been tough, the ecosystem is extremely resilient and, in parts, thriving.At a dazzling event put on by the Fintech Australia team at the Melbourne Forum, the awards highlighted the winners across multiple categories, but also the finalists, many of whom ran the winners extremely close.Zepto was named Fintech Organisation of the Year, whilst Frollo won the Excellence in Open Data award for the third straight year, the first time a single company has done this.Full list of winners below:https://www.fintechaustralia.org.au/newsroom/announcement-finnie-awards-2023-winners

Qantas wants more than its share of the travel market - it now has designs on your house.Yep, the Flying Kangaroo has acknowledged that if there's (only) one thing Aussies love more than travel, it's property, and moved into the mortgage market.The hook - and it's sure to be an attractive one to the multi-millions who search out, earn and hoard rewards points - is that your new Qantas mortgage will pay you 100,000 Qantas points annually as an incentive to make the switch.A detailed review of the offering is here:https://www.smh.com.au/money/banking/you-get-a-free-flight-every-year-but-is-qantas-new-home-loan-any-good-20230210-p5cjjy.html