An Auckland-founded fintech has turned a Wynyard Quarter startup base into a launchpad for open banking expansion, with Qippay raising $5 million as it looks beyond New Zealand.
Qippay is headquartered at GridAKL, Auckland Council's innovation hub in the John Lysaght building. The company has spent the past year building payment technology that lets businesses accept payments directly through New Zealand's banking infrastructure, cutting some of the delay and cost that can sit around traditional card and direct-debit systems.
The founder story matters because the company is not just pitching a faster checkout button. Co-founder and chief executive Ashley Lake-Johns has framed open banking as a chance to rebuild financial services around faster, more secure and more affordable local infrastructure. Qippay was founded by Lake-Johns and Wayne Deas, and its customer list already includes Webjet, NBS National Bank of Samoa and Tonga Development Bank.
The new capital came from an Australia-based private equity investor and is intended to support the company's New Zealand growth and Australian expansion. Qippay says its technology can also support uses beyond simple payments, including white-label financial services, digital wallets, loyalty programmes and data-enabled financial products.
There is also a regulatory signal behind the growth. Qippay is accredited under the Customer and Product Data Act 2025 for payment and data services, and it has bilateral API agreements with ANZ, ASB, BNZ, Westpac and Kiwibank. That places it inside the practical plumbing of open banking rather than at the edge of the conversation.
For Auckland, the story lands during Startup Week, when the city is trying to show that founder activity can become more than event energy. GridAKL has been positioned as a place where founders meet mentors, investors, industry experts and visiting delegations. Qippay credits that network with helping accelerate its development.
The useful question now is whether more locally founded companies can use the same city ecosystem to move from promising product to exportable infrastructure. Qippay's funding round gives Auckland a timely example of that pathway: a founder-led payments company, based in the central city, using open banking rules and startup-week attention to test a bigger market.
