With a market cap of just over $30 million, US-based digital banking company ChimpChange Ltd (ASX: CCA) is just a fraction of the size of Australian banking giants Commonwealth Bank of Australia (ASX: CBA) and Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ASX: ANZ).
But what it lacks in size, it certainly makes up for in ambition. Based in California, the recently listed ChimpChange aims to deliver a better way to bank with an affordable, fun, and frictionless user experience for US consumers.
The company allows its customers to send instant mobile payments and make purchases in-store wherever MasterCard is accepted, while doing all their daily transactional banking right from its app.
Today its shares have rocketed higher by as much as 15% following a market update that revealed the first in a long list of planned product launches the fintech company expects to boost its top line in the future.
Today's product launch is its photo cheque load tool. Although cheques are regarded as antiquated by many in Australia, over in the United States cheques are still very much part of the system and represent 13% of all non-cash payments in North America according to the World Payment Report.
Its tool allows its customers to take a photo of a cheque through the ChimpChange app and facilitate the load of that cheque into their ChimpChange account. If customers wish to expedite the process so the cheque clears within minutes they can pay a fee ranging from 2% to 5% of its value. Not only is this more convenient than going to the bank to cash the cheque, the rate is typically cheaper than other bricks-and-mortar cheque cashing retailers according to management.
Managing Director and founder Ashley Shilkin had this to say on the launch:
"After experiencing significant customer growth last year we decided to survey our customers to understand what types of products they wanted. Overwhelmingly our customers told us a cheque load tool would be hugely valuable and that it would also drive them to use ChimpChange as their primary transactional account. This new feature will assist with driving total transaction volume and revenue."
I believe this is a positive step forward for the fledgling fintech company. It might be a little too soon for an investment in my opinion, but it certainly is worthy of adding to your watch list today.
