Xinja was granted a restricted banking licence by APRA early last year and in the year since has developed a whole suite of new products.
The crowdfunding raise is being run from Equitise and passed the minimum raise of $500,000 within nine hours when it opened to existing investors less than a month ago.
Xinja chief executive and founder Eric Wilson said that shares were available from today and they hoped to mirror the success of last year’s raise.
“A year ago, when Xinja was the first company to launch an equity crowdfunding campaign, we raised more than half a million dollars in less than 18 hours.
“A lot has happened since then. We can now call ourselves a bank: we have a restricted banking licence, more products in development, and we have the momentum to become partners with thousands more Australians,” he said.
Mr Wilson said Xinja was getting close to delivering real competition in the traditional banking market with an ambitious year ahead.
We are now working towards a full banking license from APRA (in 2019, subject to regulatory approval) we have ambitious plans in place for the years ahead,” he said.
Xinja’s goal was to help people make better decisions said Mr Wilson and getting them on board as shareholders was part of that.
“We’re all about making banking easy. We’re about banking technology that more closely resembles what people expect from innovators and disruptors, like Netflix or Uber, as opposed to old-style, bricks and mortar-based banking,” he said.
Co-founder of Equitise Jonny Wilkinson said Xinja wanted to do another raise to enable it to build a better bank for customers which was the benefit of crowdfunding.
“Xinja is a fantastic example of the power of equity crowdfunding where ‘the crowd’ is given the opportunity to back a company they believe in.” he said.
Xinja hopes to raise up to $5 million from this funding round with shares being issued at $2.04 with a minimum parcel of $255 for each investor.
