Bundaberg plumber Matt Brennan has launched his new app TradeNow which sees tradies paid sooner and offers payment plans to customers.
The idea sparked on site during a smoko break, as discussion turned to waiting times on unpaid invoices.
“TradeNow is a mobile app for trades people to use,” Matt said.
“We offer on the job invoicing for our trades people and customers, which allows trades people to offer pay later finance on the job.
“In return [trades] receive 24 hour payment on those invoices once accepted.”
In addition to making invoicing and payment seamless for tradies, Matt said it was also a great platform for customers.
“The need’s often there, for say emergency jobs — hot water system blows or something like that — the finance can be tight.
“Sometimes you can lose that job, or they can't afford to do it.
“I saw the need for pay later finance in the trade industry, and especially the door to door trades, not the big businesses.”
TradeNow has partnered with Australian-based pay-later finance firm Zip to offer the radical payment platform which also offers peace of mind for customers.
“Trades and the customers can sign up to the app, we do all the checks on our trades people to make sure that they're qualified in their field, they have the relevant licences, just to help protect the customers.
“They can offer it to their customers as an option, or customers can ask them to sign up to the app as well.
“All sign ups happen within minutes and basically you can invoice straightaway.
“In the process customers sign up to a Zip account, our finance partner for this, and tradies then invoice the customers through the app.
“Customers accept the invoice and take on pay later finance with Zip, and then we pay our tradies within 24 hours.”
The app also offers a trade search function.
“You can type in the trade that you desire to use all the trades that are registered with TradeNow at that time, they will come up.”
As founder and CEO of TradeNow Matt has decided to launch the app in his hometown with support from tradies within his own network but his goal is to grow the app’s customer and trades base Australia-wide.
“We hope to spread across Australia and help the trade industry and help customers,” he said.
“There's been some good feedback early on.
“We thought we're onto something. So yeah, we've started to get it developed. And here we are.”
Matt believes it will be a success because of the growing trend to use pay-later finance.
“You've seen it grow in consumer products and it's starting to come into bigger businesses in the industry, but it's the door to door tradies that really need this.
“Whether it's a plumber, a mechanic, landscaping, all that sort of thing.
“At the moment we offer up to $5000 so there’s a variety of work that can be done.”
The app is available for download on the Google Play and Apple Stores, for more information head to the TradeNow website.
