#12 Challenger banking in Australia with Dom Pym (Up Bank)

Banking on Air

In this episode, we interview Dom Pym, co-founder of Up Bank about the open banking landscape in Australia, the launch of their banking API and how their focus on being a contrarian technology company has helped them bring features to market in record speed to become Australia’s first next-gen digital bank.

Here is just a small taste of how different Dom’s thinking is in the fintech product design industry and how they have managed to build something very unique:

“We actually take a contrary view: How does it feel when you sign up for Up? Does it feel easy or does it feel hard? If you got 20 clicks or a hundred clicks, it doesn't matter. I can reduce the clicks from 20 to 10 or five or one by putting all the fields on one screen, but it's a horrible experience and it makes you feel awful. So we take the opposite approach, this contrary approach, where we have an atomic design method, where we only ever asked the customer for one thing on a screen.”

Here is a rundown of the episode, if you want to jump ahead:

• 02:45 Partnering with Bendigo Bank to start Up
• 08:51 Open Banking in Australia
• 11:54 Over a 1000 people used Up API in first week
• 14:57 How they managed to launch Open Banking API so quickly by being a technology company first
• 24:20 Integrating with Transferwise to prevent complexity with SWIFT
• 25:51 What they would have done differently
• 27:49 Will Up turn into a superapp?
• 36:51 What’s the secret sauce? How are you so fast to market with great features?
• 45:42 Why they chose such a bold brand design
• 55:56 Find out how you can get your hands on a Up account and card

Useful links:

• Up Bank
• Dom Pym on Linkedin
• Tree of Up

– – –

Dom Pym has been involved in numerous start-ups and large scale Information Technology projects since the 90's, in Australia and overseas. Currently he is working on Up, Australia’s first next-gen digital bank, built from the ground up to help you spend wisely and save effortlessly.

Dominic is also a co-founder of Ferocia, an extraordinary technology team re-imagining Internet banking (launched in 2014 with Bendigo Bank), Pin Payments (Australia’s first all-in-one online payments platform) and Clear Interactive (acquired in 2009 by NZX, operators of the New Zealand Stock Exchange and electricity markets).

– – –

War stories episodes in Banking in Air podcast explores the lives and journeys of founders and technology leaders as they work to overcome challenges while building products in an ever-changing world. Hosted by Marcel Klimo of Vacuumlabs.