What was the inspiration behind Fonto?

Fonto came from the desire to provide business decision makers with more accurate consumer insights. After more than two decades in the research, consulting and data analytics sectors, it was very clear that traditional methodologies had a number of shortcomings that could be overcome using technology. Linking transaction data with research data solves a number of challenges in obtaining rich consumer insights.

We have created the ability to seamlessly link daily transaction data with survey research at an individual level, all de-identified, organised, categorised and curated in a single data ecosystem.

The last 4 years have been both intense and exciting as we built out our platform and market offerings, and then focused on growing to scale. We now have a suite of services that truly make a difference to our clients and partners.

Where does the word “Fonto” come from?

Many of my friends who founded start-ups came up with creative names using the Esperanto language so I decided to explore that. Esperanto is an artificial language that is constructed mainly from Latin. Our focus is on providing the source of truth on consumer insights and the name “Fonto” means “The Source” which fits perfectly with what we do.

How does Fonto actually work?

Fonto have over 125,000 Australians who share their financial data and get rewarded to participate in research. There are two consumer apps that enable this: 

Humaniti – a simple budgeting tool to help consumers manage their finances, and they can earn real money doing short surveys.

Surveyz – a survey app where consumers are paid for taking part in market research, and earn double the $$ and extra prizes when they link accounts.

This creates a unique consumer-driven data ecosystem that brings accuracy, speed and insight to decision making. The ability to integrate transaction data with opinions and attitudes gives unprecedented insights of both what consumers are doing AND why they are doing it. 

Fonto is then able to provide key metrics across more than 30 different categories, including market share growth trends, enabling businesses to make decisions with more confidence. Clients can access live interactive data and dashboards, updated on a weekly basis. They can also validate and engage with their target audience for survey research.

How is the Fonto service different to other ways businesses access consumer insights?

Our members on Humaniti and Surveyz are better incentivised than traditional panels. Apart from earning real money, members receive a range of other benefits including a personal finance app, comparison tools and large cash prize draws. This encourages a broader base of members to join, and ensures engagement is high while minimising churn.

For our clients, using actual transactions to verify and select respondents, and then being able to connect 360 degrees of actual data once they complete surveys is proving very compelling. The ability to access deep insights into their target market, and then track this across their customers and their competitor set, all in near-real time, is quite unique.

What’s next for Fonto?

The world of Open Banking creates many more opportunities in using financial data to innovate and create value for both businesses and consumers. Fonto is now able to access CDR Open Banking data via the Basiq platform, so we are working on ways to leverage this to optimise the suite of services available to clients. 

Humaniti 2.0 will be released in Q3 of this year, with significant enhancements to add value and engagement for our members.

Finally, we are also building out integrated partnerships across the investment, research, agency, analytics and consulting sectors to provide frictionless access to our living data source. This will create opportunities for them to generate passive income with their clients.

What made you decide to partner with Basiq?

We chose to partner with Basiq after an extensive evaluation of the various offerings in the market. Data quality and client responsiveness were key factors for us, as well as Basiq’s ability to remove the complexities with the ACCCs access models in using Open Banking. 

Basiq has the proven ability to provide access to financial data from various sources and make it easily usable which was important for us. Using the one platform to access CDR and non-CDR data enables us to obtain the most complete picture of a consumer’s financial situation is of clear value to our clients.

Innovate with Basiq

• Learn more about Open Banking via our definitive guide to Open Banking.
• Dive deeper into Basiq’s Open Banking product.
• Discover how to instantly verify accounts via the Basiq platform using Connect – a secure, reliable and unbeatable account verification method.
• Contact our team to find out more about Connect and the Basiq platform.