Thriday automates banking with Patona

When Australian fintech Thriday wanted to expand its engineering and QA team, it knew that collaborating with Patona would mean instant access to a vast talent pool in India. Having grown rapidly over the last two years, Thriday recognised that it needed to think outside the box to circumvent the talent shortage and wage spikes that have severely hampered Australian startups. With a burning ambition to hire the best talent, regardless of location, Thriday joined forces with Patona to expand its team and turn a big pain point into a competitive advantage.

Based in Melbourne, Thriday is a new fintech that has developed an innovative solution to an age-old problem - financial admin. Founded by two entrepreneurs who had experienced a fair amount of frustration with doing the books for their previous businesses, Michael and Ben came together to make it easy for small businesses to understand their financial performance and stay tax compliant. After raising a $3 million seed round in 2021, the founders went about building a solution that automates banking, accounting and tax for time-poor business owners.

Michael Nuciforo, co-founder and CEO, explains, "When I was running my first startup, I spent hours each week looking at my budget and expenses, keeping receipts, paying bills and ensuring I lodged my BAS and tax on time. It was the last thing I wanted to do with my time, and it cost over $1,000 a month in bookkeeping and accounting fees."

Having worked in banking for many years, Mr. Nuciforo identified that integrating a bank account with accounting and tax services could streamline reporting and lead to greater automation. With most businesses using up to five tools to manage their finances, there was an obvious opportunity to bring these siloed solutions into one product.

Thriday has now developed the world's first automated banking, accounting and tax solution that leverages artificial intelligence to categorise transactions and apply the correct tax and claim rules. The all-in-one platform allows businesses to open a bank account and Visa Debit card. As income and expenses hit the accounts, accounting is conducted in real-time without any input from the user.

Ben Winford, co-founder and COO, added, "We needed some serious engineering, AI, and machine learning talent to build our solution. Whilst our core team is based in Australia, we wanted to be open in our search for the best people.

It was apparent that the talent shortage was only going to get more challenging in Australia. In addition, Australia does not have a monopoly on talented developers, and we know that some of the best engineers in the world are coming out of India and Sri Lanka now. That, coupled with the ease in how Patona hires and onboards staff, made it a complete no-brainer for Thriday."

Having onboarded over ten Patona team members across web, app, backend and QA, Mr. Nuciforo is looking forward to an exciting 2023, "Last year was all about building out our product and launching it to the market. We learned a lot and identified key segments for us to go after. This year, we will focus on growth and ensuring as many small businesses as possible use Thriday."