It was time to level the paying field
What do you do next after more than a decade building up a Byron Bay skydiving business to become a national success and then stepping back after listing it on the Australian Stock Exchange?
Well, start one of Australia’s most promising fintech banking real-time payments businesses, of course. In 2022, Zepto – with its head office in Byron Bay’s Arts and Industry Estate –enabled more than $50billion in payments, raised $25million in private equity, employed its 100th staff member, and had a seat at the table discussing Australia’s monetary policy with the Reserve Bank of Australia and Minister for Finance.
The stepping stone between the two businesses, says Zepto co-founder Matt Cheers, is that the four entrepreneurs wanted to solve the challenge they faced when running Skydive Australia. “Cash flow was crippling the business,” Matt says.
“Our biggest pain point was receiving payments from [travel and booking] agents. We had about 1300 agents across Australia and the average ticket size they were collecting was $430. One agent could rack up to $100,000 a week in tickets from customers, they would hold onto that money for 90 days.” It wasn’t uncommon for the business to be owed up to $3million in accounts receivable, while they’d be taking customers on cost intensive skydiving adventures.
“We never solved this problem, even after listing,” says Matt.
Once the business was sold, the four founders (Matt along with Trevor Wistaff, Adrian Kennedy, and Ian Lennie) missed working together. “We’d catch up every month or so at my ‘dog box’ at Suffolk Park to sink beers and think of ideas,” he says.
“In Byron Bay, you’ve got to be an entrepreneur to live here. That’s what Byron is – an exciting place of innovation and really interesting people. We thought, ‘What can we do from Byron as the next chapter to keep working together?’”
So they set out to solve the clunkiness and delays in the manual payments process. The first iteration of the business was called Split Payments, and their first customer in 2017 was the not-for-profit Byron Bay Visitor Centre, with a service that could automate the collection of annual membership fees from their 100 or so local tourism operators.

“Previously they’d email the invoice, then chase people to pay, which could take months. We added the ability to authorise payment via the invoice: ‘Do you agree that Byron Visitor Centre (through Split Payments) can pull money from your account when it’s due?’ Once this was set up, every year the membership fees are automatically pulled from bank accounts and they don’t have to employ someone to chase invoices.”
It was around this time that Chris Jewell, now Zepto’s CEO, joined the team.
Chris had spent his first years living in Byron Shire flying back and forth to Sydney, running an arm of finance multinational, Citibank, before moving to a senior role with Byron tourism group TripADeal. He happened to run into old friend Adrian Kennedy in Bangalow soon after the first COVID lockdown had hit.
Adrian said: “I’ve been thinking about you, with your banking and finance background, we have this payments technology…”
At that point Split Payments had $50,000 a month in revenue, and Chris could immediately see the potential and was very quickly added as a vital member of the founding team. “I said,’ We can go all the way with this. It’s not the moon shot, it’s the Pluto shot’.” The vision was to create best in class payment technology at the highest level.
In September 2021, with Chris by then in place as CEO, the company was renamed and rebranded Zepto, derived from the word “zeptosecond” which means a trillionth of a billionth of a second.
It can be difficult to understand the Zepto technology, as one of its defining features is that it sits at the frontier of what is possible with real-time payments, and that is a fast-moving tech space. Right now that means they use an application programming interface (API), are the first non-bank organisation granted an unrestricted open banking licence, and have direct access to Australia’s New Payments Platform (NPP) infrastructure.
At its simplest, it is an “invisible” platform (invisible in that customers don’t interact with it for transactions) that enables funds to be transferred directly and instantaneously from one bank account into another. The idea is to replicate the old style of using cash to buy a good or service (in that it’s an instantaneous transaction), and differs from credit cards services that charge a percentage fee and have multi-day processing delays in getting payments to merchants. Like many of the most successful technology disrupters, it’s effectively taking out the ‘middle’ process.
Zepto charges its customers – which are primarily giants in the tourism, real estate or utilities sectors – a fee to access the tech platform as well as a small flat-rate fee per transaction.
Matt says the transaction costs for a large multinational business which can be upwards of $15million a year on credit card costs and additional transaction charges, could be easily cut to a fraction of that using Zepto’s technology. It also saves money for consumers who are becoming increasingly wary of paying a 1.5% surcharge on top of their coffee, airline tickets, or even larger property transactions.
People who interact with a business that uses Zepto may not know the tech platform is sitting there, but will love the instantaneous way they’re able to access money – including for those transferring money into share trading accounts (instant trading rather than waiting days for funds to land), for shift workers who can be paid the moment they clock off even if it’s 3am on a weekend, or for those who have an on-the-spot personal loans approved and can immediately access funds (drive home that new car on a Saturday afternoon).
Matt says being based in Byron Bay was initially a hurdle for the entrepreneurs entering the fintech space for the first time, who weren’t taken seriously in the city capitals.
“But when COVID hit, it was a massive benefit because we were remote first. We were already set up to have online meetings.”
Zepto has since enjoyed a slew of awards, including Best Innovation in Payments in the Annual FinTech Awards and winner of Australian Financial Review’s Most Innovative Companies Awards.
More than anything it’s the Byron attitude that’s helped them lead the way, Matt says.
“We thought, ‘Let’s bring the Byron spirit into it – let’s think about it completely differently and let’s do it our way.”
“That’s what Byron is – an exciting place of innovation and really interesting people”
Share this story
Read more stories
Talking together for 50 years
https://ingoodcompanynorthernrivers.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Jumbunna.jpg 1440 1080 In Good Company | Northern Rivers In Good Company | Northern Rivers https://ingoodcompanynorthernrivers.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Jumbunna.jpgJumbunna Community Preschool and Early Intervention Centre
The early childhood sector has played a vital role in supporting communities and families in the Northern Rivers amid the onslaught of challenges in the last three years.
not just a business, a community partner
https://ingoodcompanynorthernrivers.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/stone-and-wood-001.jpg 960 761 In Good Company | Northern Rivers In Good Company | Northern Rivers https://ingoodcompanynorthernrivers.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/stone-and-wood-001.jpgStone & Wood
“That’s like asking parents to name which of their children they prefer,” says Jamie Cook, Stone & Wood co-founder. He has been asked which of the…
all fired up for global attention
https://ingoodcompanynorthernrivers.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Aurora-Suspended-Fires_Ballina-in-good-company-image-4.jpg 960 600 In Good Company | Northern Rivers In Good Company | Northern Rivers https://ingoodcompanynorthernrivers.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Aurora-Suspended-Fires_Ballina-in-good-company-image-4.jpgAurora Suspended Fires
Aurora Suspended Fires arose from the perfect marriage of Chloe Allan’s creative talents with Neil’s engineering background. But building a successful…
From cobblestones to all-terrain cranes
https://ingoodcompanynorthernrivers.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Wicks-Parker.webp 1200 900 In Good Company | Northern Rivers In Good Company | Northern Rivers https://ingoodcompanynorthernrivers.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Wicks-Parker.webpWicks and Parker
Fast approaching 100 years old, the Wicks family business has helped build motorways and carry out emergency bushfire repairs, but it once hammered out steel bands for horse-drawn carriage wheels.
Delivering top service, come hospital or high water
https://ingoodcompanynorthernrivers.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/McLeans-Frieght-Service_Leisa.jpg 870 652 In Good Company | Northern Rivers In Good Company | Northern Rivers https://ingoodcompanynorthernrivers.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/McLeans-Frieght-Service_Leisa.jpgMcLeans Freight Service
When Leisa Blok’s father, Laurie McLean, began running urgent nighttime blood deliveries from Lismore airport in 1992, he mightn’t have expected the one-man gig to expand into a 50-vehicle courier fleet, delivering across the entire northern NSW region.
spellbinding growth for a home grown icon
https://ingoodcompanynorthernrivers.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/spell_designs_byron_bay001.jpg 1000 667 In Good Company | Northern Rivers In Good Company | Northern Rivers https://ingoodcompanynorthernrivers.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/spell_designs_byron_bay001.jpgSpell Designs
The scent, texture and aura of Byron Bay is famous, and well-loved. If that Byron Bay feeling was a fashion brand, it would surely be Spell & The Gypsy Collective….
revving up the community engine
https://ingoodcompanynorthernrivers.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/oatten-and-hoffman-kyogle-002.jpg 1000 667 In Good Company | Northern Rivers In Good Company | Northern Rivers https://ingoodcompanynorthernrivers.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/oatten-and-hoffman-kyogle-002.jpgOaten and Hoffman
In 2015 Tim Hoffman was riding the high on business success, and had no clue about the blow that was awaiting him….
Keeping it real in the Tweed
https://ingoodcompanynorthernrivers.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Tweed-Real-Food_Julia-scaled.jpg 1706 2560 In Good Company | Northern Rivers In Good Company | Northern Rivers https://ingoodcompanynorthernrivers.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Tweed-Real-Food_Julia-scaled.jpgTweed Real Food
Tweed Real Food is a business launched in 2018 from a desire to be resilient. Little did founder Julia Foyster know how prescient her plan would turn out to be.
Nurtured by nature
https://ingoodcompanynorthernrivers.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/GreenX7_Tim-Jack-Adams-scaled.jpg 2560 1723 In Good Company | Northern Rivers In Good Company | Northern Rivers https://ingoodcompanynorthernrivers.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/GreenX7_Tim-Jack-Adams-scaled.jpgGreenx7
For the past 10 years GreenX7 has been running workshops and retreats internationally and in the Tweed for clients as diverse as McDonald’s, Deloitte, Six Senses, and the Australian Defence Force, to inspire both individuals and teams to tap into the healing power of nature.
local, seasonal, transformative gem hits town
https://ingoodcompanynorthernrivers.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/jane.jpg 960 639 In Good Company | Northern Rivers In Good Company | Northern Rivers https://ingoodcompanynorthernrivers.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/jane.jpgGateway Fine Foods and Catering
Debbie McQueen has three words of advice for anyone starting a business in Kyogle: flexibility, perseverance and patience. They’re three traits Debbie…
It was time the level the paying field
https://ingoodcompanynorthernrivers.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Zepto-image-e1669713021167.jpg 1500 562 In Good Company | Northern Rivers In Good Company | Northern Rivers https://ingoodcompanynorthernrivers.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Zepto-image-e1669713021167.jpgZepto
What do you do next after more than a decade building up a Byron Bay skydiving business to become a national success and then stepping back after listing it on the Australian Stock Exchange?
A hive of success and support
https://ingoodcompanynorthernrivers.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Wild-Honey.jpg 940 627 In Good Company | Northern Rivers In Good Company | Northern Rivers https://ingoodcompanynorthernrivers.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Wild-Honey.jpgWild Honey Creative
Wild Honey Creative is living proof that special skills and services we might once have associated with our cities – such as graphic and digital design, innovation in marketing and brand storytelling – are thriving in regional areas.
Farmers in the fields
https://ingoodcompanynorthernrivers.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/E0A8334.jpg 2048 1366 In Good Company | Northern Rivers In Good Company | Northern Rivers https://ingoodcompanynorthernrivers.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/E0A8334.jpgNorco Primex
Bruce Wright has made his career by bringing together and supporting many of the region’s farmers and primary producers.
when opportunity knocks…
https://ingoodcompanynorthernrivers.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/horizon-motorhomes-ballina-002.jpeg 1600 1067 In Good Company | Northern Rivers In Good Company | Northern Rivers https://ingoodcompanynorthernrivers.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/horizon-motorhomes-ballina-002.jpegHorizon Motorhomes
When a campervan arrived on Clayton Kearney’s used car yard in 1995, and sold in seconds flat, he realised there was a gap in the market…
partners with industry, partners with community
https://ingoodcompanynorthernrivers.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/SCU-Enterprise-Lab-launch-copy.jpg 2000 1048 In Good Company | Northern Rivers In Good Company | Northern Rivers https://ingoodcompanynorthernrivers.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/SCU-Enterprise-Lab-launch-copy.jpgSouthern Cross University
Celebrating a silver anniversary is a significant milestone, 25 years of developing your relationship, exploring and accepting your strengths…
A planet of business diversity
https://ingoodcompanynorthernrivers.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Tropical-Fruit-World_Aymon-Gow-Main-Gate.jpg 2016 1512 In Good Company | Northern Rivers In Good Company | Northern Rivers https://ingoodcompanynorthernrivers.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Tropical-Fruit-World_Aymon-Gow-Main-Gate.jpgTropical Fruit World
It’s been almost 50 years since Robert and Valorie Brinsmead bought the 200-acre farm in Murwillumbah.
collectively creative social heaven
https://ingoodcompanynorthernrivers.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/30715202_1014120148743120_6987131970559934464_o.jpg 1080 823 In Good Company | Northern Rivers In Good Company | Northern Rivers https://ingoodcompanynorthernrivers.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/30715202_1014120148743120_6987131970559934464_o.jpgIsland Collective
If you are looking for contemporary artist and stylist Fleur Yorston, you’ll most likely find her among fiddle leaf figs and cane furniture, in her Yamba…
Community connection runs deep
https://ingoodcompanynorthernrivers.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Untitled-1.jpg 1644 848 In Good Company | Northern Rivers In Good Company | Northern Rivers https://ingoodcompanynorthernrivers.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Untitled-1.jpgConnect Business Solutions
Connect Business Solutions can be thought of as the glue that holds a business community together.
A fighting spirit … and great networks
https://ingoodcompanynorthernrivers.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Five-Sixty.webp 768 1024 In Good Company | Northern Rivers In Good Company | Northern Rivers https://ingoodcompanynorthernrivers.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Five-Sixty.webpFive Sixty Farms
Stranded on the roof of his house with his wife and their eight children, Pepe Fassos watched helplessly as his beloved greenhouses smashed and floated away in a tsunami of floodwater.
effective creatives have all the fun
https://ingoodcompanynorthernrivers.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/cumulus-vfx-byron-002.jpg 1000 750 In Good Company | Northern Rivers In Good Company | Northern Rivers https://ingoodcompanynorthernrivers.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/cumulus-vfx-byron-002.jpgCumulus VFX
They’ve walked the Sydney Harbour Bridge with Hoges. Gone down the garden path with Peter Rabbit. Flown Katie Holmes over…