Founder and CEO of Smartie Brett Baudinet Photo: Supplied
A "super-app" is being developed for the Pacific that will allow people to make instant money transactions, including for remittances.
The app, called Smartie, which also plans to have a ride-share feature like Uber, will allow users to buy crypto currency and will have access to online market places.
Founder and chief executive Brett Baudinet is planning to launch the app in a couple of months, although he does not like talking about dates because "there is always moving parts in the tech space".
The testing ground will be in the Cook Islands where the app is being developed.
"Once we can prove the concept here, we're going to pick that up and then transfer it across the entire South Pacific," Baudinet said.
"We do have a pretty aggressive expansion plan."
Baudinet is basing the app off Grab and GoJek - huge multi-billion-dollar apps in southeast Asia.
"We're not reinventing the wheel; the super app concept is very big overseas," he said.
"We're trying to bring those concepts here, but we have to custom-build them because we're lacking in infrastructure here with internet services."
Cook Islands' entrepreneur develops a new 'super' app for the Pacific
Baudinet said many of the online services available in New Zealand and Australia, like ride-share, do not exist in the South Pacific.
"If I'm paying my staff I have to pay them two days in advance because it literally takes two days to go from my bank account to the next bank that's 20 meters down the road.
"Whereas our system by the time you've hit pay the person's got it instantly."
Baudinet said PayPal was still the only payment solution that was quick and easy to implement in the South Pacific.
He said he had been using it since 2008 for his e-commerce website, but it requires businesses to be registered in New Zealand.
"So nothing much has changed."
'Innovation'
Baudinet said the idea of the app came when travel was put on hold due to Covid-19, stopping revenue being generated from his online travel agency.
"Since Covid, as we like to say, everyone went into hibernation, we went into innovation; we had to pivot a little bit.
"We moved into the FinTech space to tackle the issues that we've had with the lack of proper and efficient payment solutions in the South Pacific."
The start-up plans to make the most of its money from the additional features in the app, like the marketplace, but user-to-user money transactions will be free.