Emerge Raises $12m To Redefine Banking

Jamie Jermain and Jovan Pavlicevic (the founders behind SquareOne) started Emerge to address the extremely frustrating challenges around business banking in New Zealand. While they’re keen to underscore Emerge isn’t a registered bank - yet - Pavlicevic comments: “Emerge was built to help Kiwi businesses do more, faster, better. In just a few minutes, you’ve opened as many Emerge accounts as you need, with features better than the banks, and team cards ready to go. Against the months of work and paper forms needed in applying for a legacy bank account, we’re seeing very fast customer love - and we’re just getting started.”

Led by Altered Capital with support from Icehouse Ventures, K1W1 and NZ Fintech Fund in New Zealand and US VC Hard Yaka, the raise will be used for key marketing, sales, and product hires as well as the ramp up of the startup’s go-to-market strategy. “Feedback from customers has been overwhelmingly positive. They love how fast, easy, and transparent everything is, and the time and money they save which goes back into their business - so now it’s time to share this with even more of the country,” comments Jermain.

Redefining banking, with the backing to pull it off

This is the second investment round led by Altered Capital. “Emerge believes in New Zealand’s entrepreneurial potential, and its frictionless experience is already having a massive impact on the way that Kiwis manage their money. We’re excited to support them to redefine what banking can be: from New Zealand to New Zealand and the world,” comments McGregor Fea, Managing Partner of Altered Capital. Altered Capital was one of the earliest investors in the huge challenger banking success out of the UK, Starling Bank.

Banking that works at the speed of business

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“We’ve built the industry’s simplest offering. No branch visits and no paperwork are needed thanks to a fully digitised onboarding process,” explains Jermain. With Emerge, a business can open an account instantly in-app, from home. They can then generate new cards in an instant with centralised limits, controls, and real-time notifications - doing away with messy and time-consuming processes like expense claims.

Emerge is also releasing features previously unseen in New Zealand. EmergePay turns every phone into a payment terminal. Batch payments allow businesses to pay all of their invoices straight from their accounting software. Enriched transactions take all of the guesswork out of where your money has been spent. And that is just the start. Emerge intends to completely redefine what a bank can be with its roadmap of innovations in payment acceptance, accounting tools and more.

Eyes on the future

For now, Emerge isn’t a registered bank - but has plans to become a fully-fledged challenger, with the express purpose of helping customers to do more with their money. That starts with kids (through SquareOne), to business owners (through Emerge) and (coming soon) individuals and sole traders too.

“Emerge is so much more than just better business accounts - it’s a gateway to smarter, faster business operations. With this new capital, we’re excited to really expand our impact and keep helping NZ do more with money,” concludes Pavlicevic.

About Emerge

Emerge is a digital-first banking alternative, built to allow businesses to go faster, be more cost-effective, and save time.

Combining cutting-edge technology with the best industry practices, Emerge will make managing finances for business owners, operators and teams a breeze.

It’s one platform. Zero fees. All your business finances. Done better.

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