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Australian Optal 'fastest-growing fintech in Europe'

05 July 2017 3:47PM
While local disruptors such as Tyro and Pin Payments are winning plenty of coverage in the financial media, one of Australia's most profitable and fastest-growing digital fintechs seems to have slipped under the radar.Optal Limited has kept a low profile since it was formed in 2002 as PSP International, but the company's anonymity in Europe was blown out of the water in April when the Financial Times named it the fastest-growing fintech in Europe.The FT audit found that the global payments industry provider increased its revenue by more than 6000 per cent to £81.2 million (A$146 million) between 2012 and 2015.The FT's discovery raised little interest in Australia, probably because Optal is incorporated in the United Kingdom and generates most of its revenue - now around $250 million a year - through its European operations.However, missing in the FT's study of Optal's operations were details about the unlisted company's shareholders.Research conducted by Banking Day in June found that most of the names on the company's UK share register have Melbourne and Sydney addresses.Optal is an Australian-owned business and its most senior executives are based in Melbourne.Its board includes some notable figures in the local banking sector, including the chairperson, Andre Sekulic.Sekulic is well known in banking circles as a director of the Development Bank of Singapore and as the former head of MasterCard's Asia Pacific operations.Leigh Clapham, a former director of David Jones and one-time general manager of MasterCard's UK business is also on the board, along with the chair of National Australia Bank's private wealth advisory committee, Paul Lewis.The managing director of Optal is Rob Bishop, a former senior executive at several major banks who oversaw the introduction of internet banking at Westpac in the mid 1990s.Optal's main business is issuing virtual MasterCards to merchants in the travel and hospitality industry and leveraging proprietary technology to execute cross-border transactions in 34 currencies.One of the big drivers of the company's growth is a joint venture business known as eNett, which facilitates business-to-business payments in the travel industry using Virtual Account Numbers (VANs) that are automatically generated by MasterCard.The business case for eNett's payments platform rests partly on reducing the incidence of fraud and supplier default rates for merchants by automatically generating VANs for each payment they make.The point of difference in the eNett payments environment is that merchants holding virtual MasterCards authorise a payment with a transaction number rather than a card number.eNett was founded by Melbourne entrepreneur Anthony Hynes, who is still managing director of the business. Hynes retains an equity interest in the firm through his shareholding in Optal, which owns 23.5 per cent of eNett. The New York-listed travel industry services group, Travelport, owns the majority stake.Optal is the primary issuer of virtual MasterCards that use eNett's proprietary payments technology.In an interview with Banking Day at Optal's Australian head office in Melbourne, Bishop revealed that the company was preparing to expand its B2B payments model to other industries where there was demand for cross-border payments."We now have

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