Gobbling up your bills one at a time: how startup Gobbill is automating bill payment through AI

So, here’s an idea: imagine a digital financial assistant powered by artificial intelligence that digitises your bills and schedule payments, all whilst checking for fraud.

Pretty cool, right? That’s what Gobbill, a fintech startup that automates bill payments for small businesses and households does.

But that’s not all. Shendon Ewans, CEO and Co-Founder of Gobbill, says, “You can link any Australian bank account, and it will debit that account, so you don’t have to tell every biller your bank account details. Essentially, the product allows you to centralise your direct debits in one place.”

In addition, the ability to pay your bills in cryptocurrency will be coming soon thanks to a partnership with digital currency exchange and wallet company Cointree.

Alan Tsen, GM of Stone & Chalk Melbourne, says, “We are proud to facilitate the success of our startups, and seeing Gobbill’s continual growth cements the exciting opportunities we enable at Stone & Chalk.”

The global alliance will offer customers the option to pay their bills with a wide range of digital currencies, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and more.

“Digital currencies are becoming mainstream, and our view at Gobbill is to support customer choice and convenience… The partnership will cater to this market and ensure Gobbill continues to remain ahead of the curve when it comes to allowing our users to pay their bills automatically, while knowing they’re protected from fraud and scams,” announced Shendon.

You would be hard pressed to find a more appropriate name for Gobbill, but Shendon assures us that the pun came about organically. “My co-founder Quentin Marsh came up with the name. Not only is it the sound a male turkey makes, it’s an action that you can assign to the startup, to process your bill.”

Be that as it may, Gobbill also deals with all manner of financial bills. Designed to make your life admin a breeze, it can pay bills issued from any Australian provider, including utilities, telecom, council rates and insurance. Particular emphasis has been placed on ease, organisation and protection. As such the financial assistant, sponsored by Microsoft, is able to protect from online scams, avoid late fees, maximise discounts and safeguard credit rating scores.

“One of the things that’s unique about us is our data stewardship policy,” says Shendon. “We started three years ago with an understanding that this was for our family and friends, and we’ve kept to that, holding a data stewardship policy that we don’t sell or share the information to other parties. We use automation technology to help our users to manage their bill payments and for them to see if they can save money.”

And it shows. Founded in 2015 and officially launched in May 2017, Gobbill has since seen a 60 per cent growth per quarter. Much of the success has been achieved in the past year alone, with the exponential increase in small business and household signups resulting in a “375 percent jump in payment volumes last quarter compared to the same time last year.” (The Australian Business Review).

To help steer the company’s growth and direction, two advisers with deep experience have joined the team; Jon Williams (co-founder of Culture Amp) and Dr. Jia-Yee Lee (Director, University of Melbourne).

As far as new horizons go, Gobbill has not slowed down since their early ‘gobbling’ days. CDO Trends has since named them one of the new fintechs that will help restore the Aussie banking ‘trust deficit’ created by big banks, after unethical and unlawful conduct was uncovered by the financial services Royal Commission earlier this year.

Gobbill has also secured two major partnerships prior to Cointree. One with financial wealth management platform myprosperity, and ASX-listed RegTech company iSignthis. These collaborations will provide a more seamless and integrated bill automation payment experience in Australia and overseas.

With all these new horizons, Shendon is proud of Gobbill’s home at Stone & Chalk. “It’s a great supportive community. There are a lot of experienced founders and startups with amazing depth of knowledge in different fields, and a willingness to help each other out.”

Find out more about Gobbill.