Clever by design: The innovative Aussie fintech ready to take on the world

First-time founder Caroline Tran possesses “a very strong bias towards action”. Now, backed by a 70-strong global team, her fintech Hello Clever is on track for tenfold revenue growth in just two years.

In an entrepreneurial sense, Hello Clever was a “lockdown baby”. 

Sydney-based Caroline Tran, like the rest of us, was largely holed up, watching as the shopping economy shifted online almost instantly. An accountant by trade, Tran observed as consumers embraced cashless commerce, with fewer person-to-person payments and more platform-driven buying. 

In telehealth, fellow Sydneysider Eucalyptus rapidly scaled to meet surging demand. In hospitality, Melbourne-based Mr Yum capitalised on the sudden shift to contactless ordering. On top of that, there was a trove of remote working platforms whose brand names have become office terms. 

“From healthcare to toilet paper, everything went online in a matter of weeks,” says Tran. “Seeing the world change, basically overnight, made me realise not only the centrality of a robust, agile payments system to a business’s success, but also the levels of customer intelligence that businesses could unlock from the payment data they had.” 

Enter, Hello Clever. First-time founder Tran positioned the start-up account-to-account payment company alongside traditional banking options and established fintechs like PayPal at the checkout page, with a key point of difference. Tran’s vision was to arm Hello Clever with built-in instant cashback and loyalty programs that appeal to value-obsessed younger demographics, inspired by other markets. 

As a Vietnamese-Australian, Tran was also acutely aware of the shift across South-East Asia, where digital adoption “leapfrogged” traditional infrastructure. Tran says that while only four per cent of Australian consumers use account-to-account payments, that figure is already at 20 per cent in markets like Malaysia. Tran predicts infrastructure like Australia’s New Payments Platform (NPP) will increase the uptake on our shores. 

“The Philippines, Vietnam and Malaysia represent the future of payments: fast-growing, mobile-first economies where consumers expect seamless, digital-first experiences,” says Tran. “We weren’t constrained by outdated systems or legacy assumptions. This allowed us to design a solution that met today’s needs: real-time, intelligent, and global.” 

To transform that vision into tangible systems that support rapid growth, Hello Clever needed a highly disciplined approach. That came from chief financial officer Lakun Agrawal, who brought decades of experience at large multinational groups. Crucially, Agrawal also had an appetite to build a business from the ground up, a shift away from maintaining mature corporate machines. 

“We weren’t constrained by outdated systems or legacy assumptions. This allowed us to design a solution that met today’s needs: real-time, intelligent, and global.”

“I was really looking for something, an opportunity to build something, and build it from zero ideally,” says Agrawal. “To have impact, ownership and being able to shape the culture.” 

Agrawal has proven to be a pragmatic counterweight to Tran’s unbridled ambition, giving Hello Clever a foundation to scale responsibly, enter new markets with confidence and build credibility. Now, they are a 70-member team with people across Australia, Singapore, Vietnam, the Philippines, and the USA. 

“The number one point of failure, when you would expect a CFO not to do their job, is when the company runs out of cash,” says Agrawal, who oversees all financial and commercial initiatives. “So, there’s this dance that we have to do all the time of how much money is coming in this month, how much is going out, what’s our cash flow.” 

Agrawal was so inspired by Tran’s vision that he was an angel investor in the company from day one. He describes Tran as an ambitious CEO who wants to scale quickly. In pursuit of growth, she isn’t afraid to push the envelope in a number of different directions, says Agrawal. 

“I think one of the reasons I love working with Caroline is that both she and I have a very strong bias towards action,” says Agrawal. “We get the data, we debate it, we make a decision, we do it, and we move on to the next issue, and the next one.” 

That decision-making process, moving from an analytics-driven discussion to a live product in a fraction of the time a traditional bank would require for a pilot programme, led to the creation of Hello Clever tool Clever AI. This automated marketing feature integrates directly with live payment metrics to analyse customer purchasing patterns and forecast sales. 

Clever AI sits directly on top of live payment flows and helps merchants understand what’s actually driving revenue, conversion, and repeat behaviour. It enables small- and medium-sized merchants to launch targeted campaigns. The tool has helped propel Hello Clever past $30 million in annual recurring revenue while unlocking tremendous growth for the fintech’s clients. 

“We grew our revenue almost three times from 2024 to 2025, and this year we are looking to triple it again,” says Agrawal. “That means we will be nine times as big as we were two years ago. Imagine a business that’s ten times the size in just two years.” 

That success has been enough to land Tran on the Forbes Asia 100 To Watch list, and secure Hello Clever a Top 10 placement in the AFR Fast Starters list – the only company in Australia to be listed in the Top 10 two years running. The expansion has been rapid, and Hello Clever is also now moving into physical stores.  

Through a partnership with Tyro Payments, the fintech has integrated its real-time rewards platform directly with Tyro’s network of EFTPOS terminals. Shoppers can link their payment methods to the Hello Clever app, tap to pay in-store, and receive cashback in their wallet instantly, completely bypassing the need for physical loyalty cards or delayed points systems. 

“We unify payments, rewards, and intelligence into one system,” says Tran. “For merchants, it means higher performance. For customers, it means real value every time they pay.” 

The team at Hello Clever doesn’t take baby steps, and the global-reaching company has matured rapidly in these post-pandemic years. Undoubtedly, the heart of Hello Clever will always be online.  

“I’ve never been in a business like this,” says Agrawal. “We’re growing so quickly.” 

Learn more at helloclever.co