Australian fintech SendGold has built an app which allows users to own and trade physical gold. It calls it the world’s first ‘Gold as a Service’, or GaaS, platform.
“In our view, gold is 3 things – an investment, hedge and insurance policy,” SendGold co-founder Mark Pey told Stockhead.
“With us, it is also a means of payment and bank account alternative – instead of a currency losing buying power, this is the basis of every day transactions.
“Gold is a good asset but it is a bit mysterious. We want to demystify gold and make it simple to own.”
Punters might go to a website and see 20-25 ways to buy gold, Pey says. SendGold just want to make it as simple as one question – ‘how much?’.
“And because we provide outright ownership of metals, it is not like a stock or bond, it is like e-commerce.”
Skyrocketing demand since COVID-19
While other assets have fallen during the pandemic gold prices have held their ground, firming its reputation as a safe haven asset. SendGold has seen platform transactions surge 648 per cent with the average size growing by 339 per cent.
The company began in 2015 and took years of hard work to build, but now that hard work it is paying off.
“We were thinking about ‘where is money and payments going?’ and we saw it through the lens of a mobile app,” Pey says.
“We set out to take a really institutional view of this opportunity. We needed to have an ‘investment bank-grade’ platform; the legal, compliance, tax platform sorted out.
“It takes a long time to build a platform like this. It is now coming to fruition in terms of new customers and new channels.”
It is a fantastic time to own history’s greatest store of wealth, Pey says.
“I think there are still questions about how other assets handle the [COVID-19] crisis,” he says.
“But gold has handled it all before, every world war and pandemic, so it is a super top asset. We want to make it more accessible.”