Zeller and Stripe in payments land grab as competition heats up

Melbourne payments player Zeller has global ambitions, but in its way are multinationals such as Irish-American fintech Stripe which is making an aggressive expansion in Australia.

Zeller CEO Ben Pfisterer says the payments company is looking to go global

Melbourne payments player Zeller has global ambitions, after launching its latest terminal on Monday.

Zeller, which offers an integrated payments, transactions and savings product to business users, said it was moving to a new terminal after the success of its first product which was initially aimed at small-business users.

Since the launch in 2021, the company has increased its products and secured midmarket and medium-sized business clients, including a national rollout with pizza giant Domino’s.

Chief executive and co-founder Ben Pfisterer said Zeller planned to make a foray into another major Western market, in what would be its first international expansion.

Mr Pfisterer said the company was considering five countries, and was confident that “when we hit those markets, we will have the best terminal in the world”.

He said Zeller’s products benefited companies which wanted to move away from incumbent or legacy players.

He said Zeller’s newly launched T2 payments systems were more attractive than Verifone or Ingenico machines offered by banks to their business customers. “Often the competition falls into the trap that it’s a bad experience outside the hardware,” he said.

“We think all the traditional banks and incumbents don’t know how to make the user experience better.”

Payments company Zeller has launched its new T2 terminals.

Mr Pfisterer said banks or other payments players often required their customers to rent the terminals, tying their use to other banking arrangements. This contrasts with Zeller’s model, which sells the payments terminals alongside banking and transaction functionality.

“We’re bringing invoicing and account management, corporate accounts together,” he said.

Zeller has been a quiet winner of the cheap money era of tech funding. The company hasn’t sought to raise cash from investors since clinching a $100m Series B round in March 2022.

Mr Pfisterer said this reflected the strength of its business, with the company largely funding its operations through cashflow.

But he said Zeller may consider another funding round, and could be “looking at these big inorganic growth opportunities”.

“There’s probably a bit more natural runway. I think our numbers point to medium and long-term growth,” he said.

Rival global payments players are also targeting the same market as Zeller, including Dutch company Adyen and Irish-American fintech Stripe.

Stripe Australia and New Zealand managing director Karl Durrance at the payments company's event in Sydney.

Stripe chief executive Patrick Collison, appearing at an event put on by the payments giant to spruik its booming Australian business, revealed the hot competition among tech players for a slice of the Australian market.

Australia is now the third-largest market for Stripe, outside the US, with almost 500,000 users of its payments technology.

Stripe Australia and New Zealand managing director Karl Durrance said the company had hired a local leader to head up its NZ push. Mr Durrance said the company was growing strongly as the use of cash declined.

This was leading to Stripe’s transaction volume growing at about 25 per cent year on year.

“Australia is in line with that expectation,” he said.

Mr Durrance said Stripe was now picking up major commercial clients, including Nine’s Streaming platform Stan.

The almost three-year veteran of Stripe, after joining from Amazon Web Services, said the payments company was “still seeing healthy growth” in consumer spending across its platform.

“That’s still a reflection of the large macro trend that consumers are referencing online transactions more than ever before,” he said.