APRA is talking, on average, with one new challenger bank or fintech each week, Melisande Waterford, general manager for licensing, told the Intersekt conference in Melbourne yesterday.Only one neobank - volt - has made it through all the APRA gates in that time and qualified for a restricted licence, but there may be no shortage of fintechs willing to tackle the complexity of licencing as a bank or as a purchased payment facility provider.A now annual census of the local scene by EY and Fintech Australia, released yesterday, shows 24 per cent of domestic fintechs are operating in (or hope to operate in) the domain of "payments, wallets and supply chain", up from 16 per cent in 2017.Those messing around with marketplace lending models account for 19 per cent of those in the census, down from 23 per cent in 2017.Of around 150 entities analysed by EY, around six in all described themselves as challenger banks.Meredith Angwin, a financial service partner at EY Australia, wrote in the census that "the levels of capital available to high-growth businesses in Australia continue to rise". "In FY18, the financial year saw the fintech sector recording 111 fundraisings, with an average value of just under $9 million (drawn from Techboard's Australian start-up funding report)."Of those fintechs that have successfully raised capital to date since their inception, on average each has raised $4.5m. This is an increase on what was seen in the last two years($3.9m in 2016 and $4.1m in 2017), reflecting the maturing industry. "Fintechs in existence for three or more years have on average raised $5.95m of capital to date, compared with $1.8m for younger fintechs."As in the prior two years, most fintechs in Australia have received private funding (70 per cent). Six in ten (63 per cent) also accessed commercial funding and on average have raised $5.1m in capital. Only one in five fintechs are currently profitable, the census found.