2018 CRN Impact Awards: Credit Clear

Getting the sale and doing the job are critical to grow a business – equally important, and often maligned, is the process of actually getting paid.

Customers may have innocently overlooked a payment deadline, and the relationship will suffer if they receive a demand to pay that is perceived as threatening or confrontational.

This is the wicked problem that fintech start-up Credit Clear attempts to solve with its artificial intelligence SaaS and mobile payments system.

“Credit Clear… selects the most appropriate platform to communicate based on the profile of the customer and uses everyday… instant messaging and text messaging,” said Credit Clear managing director Simon Scalzo, an entrant in this year’s CRN Impact Awards.

“All communication is tailored to clients’ brands to simplify the conversion path for customer payments, leaving clients to focus on core competencies and selling services.”

Scalzo, a former BDO partner and founder of fintech start-up Evoke Autopay, said Credit Clear rapidly turns what it learns about customers into action while delivering “hyper-personalised experiences for the end-user”.

He claimed a 500 percent improvement in arrears over traditional collections, “through a notification system that is personalised to the individual, discrete, simple and mobile” and works in any currency.

Credit Clear teamed with Windsor, Victoria design studio Alter to create a compelling user interaction that wouldn’t alienate the recipients of requests for payment. Design and strategy lead Alex Farner says they identified the “most meaningful metrics, prompts and preemptive content to simplify user flow and reduce complex communications”.

“Interaction, animation and transitions further reinforce usability and intuitive function,” Farner says.

“A contemporary and engaging interface is key to this user experience, a critical component in the development and maintenance of trust in the product. It also helps to ensure that this product is distinct from competitors.”

The patented Credit Clear AI compute cloud is available as a white-label solution that scales to enterprise-grade to facilitate payments throughout the customer lifecycle, “from invoicing to debt collection”, said Credit Clear’s Scalzo.

Over the next year, Credit Clear seeks to expand out of its core Australia, New Zealand and US markets where it processed $180 million last year and into Singapore, Malaysia and Britain.

Credit Clear’s international channel partner is Deloitte. It raised $10 million in a Series A capital round, and includes former Google and Aopen executives on its advisory committee.

Credit Clear is a finalist in the 'Emerging Innovator' category in the 2018 CRN Impact Awards. For a list of all finalists and further details on the awards, please head to the CRN Impact Awards hub. The awards take place during the CRN Pipeline conference. You can get more information and purchase tickets here.