Perennial, Salter Brothers into fintech Verrency

As seen on-line in the Australian Financial Review

Anthony Macdonald and Yolanda Redrup – September 7, 2021

 

Melbourne-based fund manager Salter Brothers and Perennial Value Management have led a $6.5 million capital injection into fintech Verrency.

Founded five years ago by former Accenture Asia Pacific managing director of financial services, David Link, the company enables financial institutions to offer new, personalised banking products, without needing to overhaul their legacy tech stacks.

Verrency founder David Link has added Salter Brothers and Perennial to its capital table.

The Salter Brothers Private Equity Fund and Perennial will both invest $2.5 million in Verrency, while existing shareholders have taken out $1.5 million of the Series A round. Its existing investors include Alium Capital and Caledonia’s Will Vicars.

Verrency counts major global financial services institutions such as FIS, Eftpos and Visa as customers.

Its SaaS platform connects to bank processors’ and card issuers’ legacy platforms, enabling banks to offer their users the ability to do things like round up purchases and donate the extra to charity, or send it to a savings account. It’s also enabled customers to offer their users the ability to offset the carbon footprint of transactions.

Salter Brothers managing director Paul Salter said they had been connected with Verrency since late last year and invested because its technology could work on top of existing banking infrastructure, making it easier to integrate with legacy systems.

“It’s highly valuable for the incumbents…we saw it as a massive opportunity where you’re in the centre of that payment space, and you can turn customers on,” he said.

Link said the business has been growing revenue consistently by 50 per cent to 70 per cent a year.

“We’re live in over a dozen banks in US, and we’ll be live in hundreds next year,” he said.

“We solve the buy-versus-build pain for incumbent financial institutions, and we have had a strong first mover advantage.”