Keeping Coromandel Dollars in Coromandel – Tech for Everyday People Series
Last issue we explained open banking. We asked Coromandel developer David Crompton to show what he is building on top of it.
Last issue Coromind explained open banking, the shift that lets New Zealanders move money straight from bank to bank for a fraction of what cards cost. I want to show you what we have built on top of it, here in the Coromandel, and it launches this July.
For years I have watched local cafes, tradies and shopkeepers pay up to 2 per cent of every transaction to overseas card networks like Visa and Mastercard, and another slice to Google to be found online. Around 210,000 small businesses in this country have almost no online presence. A lot of them still take cash, or read their bank number out over the counter, because an EFTPOS terminal means a monthly rental and a cut of every sale. I thought there should be a simpler way.
So, we built one. Shop Local is a free app that lets someone pay you straight from their bank account. And you do not have to be a business. A sports club collecting subs, a school fundraiser, a market stall, the Saturday sausage sizzle: anyone who needs to gather money can use it.
Here is how it works. Set-up is a one-off: download the app, create an account on your phone, and register your bank account number. That is it. No terminal, no contract, no hardware to rent. Whoever is paying you approves a transfer in their own banking app, the way they would confirm any payment. There is nothing for them to download, it works with any New Zealand bank account, and the money lands in your account in seconds, not the day or two a card takes.
The savings are the point. Instead of paying a card network 1.5 to 2 per cent on every sale, you pay a small flat fee. A sole trader turning over $4,000 a month might hand over around $140 once you add up EFTPOS rental and card fees; take away the rental and the percentage cut, and that bill drops sharply. And because the fee is flat rather than a percentage, the bigger the payment the more you save: a tradie’s $600 invoice that loses around $12 to a card costs a fraction of that here.
And it is not only about fees. For a sports club or a school fundraiser, the app replaces the cash tin and the bank number scrawled on a sign: no float to count, no chasing a forgotten transfer. They approve, the money arrives, and you can see who has paid.
If you are a business, signing up does something else, too: a free listing in the Shop Local directory, with photos, hours, contact details and a map. People can finally find the plumber in Whitianga or the cafe in Thames they could not before. Yellow Pages and Finda used to do that job; both are gone or turned into ad platforms. We are putting it back, for free.
The Coromandel is our proving ground. We have already added over a thousand Thames-Coromandel businesses from public records, and our first local businesses will be taking real payments through the app from launch. If you run a business between Waihi and Colville, you are probably already in there.
The bigger picture matters more than the technology. New Zealand quietly loses tens of millions of dollars a year to overseas payment networks and advertising platforms. Open banking, paired with tools built here, plugs the leak, and the savings stay local: in wages, in stock, in better prices for the rest of us.
The app lands in the App Store and Google Play in July, free to download and free to use. Join the waiting list at https://shoplocal.nz today and we will tell you the moment it goes live. Whether you run a business, a club, or a one-off fundraiser in the Coromandel, it might be the easiest money you ever saved. Come and build it with us.
Words by David Crompton
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