Emerge
Emerge is a New Zealand money app that runs a person's everyday account and a small business's account side by side, from a phone and without a branch.
- Category
- AI and B2B SaaS
- Fund
- NZVC I
- Website
- www.emerge.nz
- On TechMates
- 2 episodes
What Emerge does
An account opens in minutes and the virtual card works before the plastic arrives. Emerge is not a registered bank, so customer money is held in trust with a licensed New Zealand bank and each balance stays separate and claimable. Jamie Jermain and Jovan Pavlicevic started the company as SquareOne in 2021, to teach children to earn, save and spend on a card of their own. They built Emerge Business for companies and sole traders next, and Emerge Personal after that.
The secret
The rails the founders built so a child could carry a real card, with a parent holding the controls, turned out to be the rails a small business needs: one person spending on a card, and another person setting what it can do. SquareOne proved them on families, and Emerge Business runs on the same ones.
Why NZVC invested in Emerge
We backed the company when it was SquareOne, because financial capability is rarely taught well and parents wanted a safe, practical way to build money habits early. The product taught through real earning, saving and spending, with the parent holding the controls. What we were underwriting was the payments infrastructure underneath it, and the trust that comes with holding a family's money. Both carried into Emerge, where the same account and card now serve sole traders and companies.
In the founder's words
“A lot of investors make a point of saying they can add value - but you guys really walk the talk.”
Emerge in the press
- EdTech in the Spotlight: SquareOne Empowers Financial Literacy for Kiwi KidsEdTechNZ · 22 April 2025
- SquareOne + Thinkerbell Aotearoa explore what happens when kids don't learn financial literacyCampaign Brief NZ · 5 February 2025
- SquareOne became Emerge and launched a banking offer for small businessesNBR · 28 March 2024
- Two Northland fathers built New Zealand's first money app for childrenNZ Herald · 8 February 2022
- SquareOne moved from children's pocket money to small business bankingCaffeine (via Emerge)
Emerge on TechMates
Fintech Frontiers: Reinventing Money from the Edge of the World | NZVC Portfolio Day
You hear three founders describe what it takes to build fintech in a country where four Australian banks own the market. Jovan Pavlicevic on lobbying to start a bank, Dermot Butterfield on open banking pipes, and Steven Zinsli on making public transport tax-free through product design.
A joint episode, alongside Wych and Extraordinary.
Emerge on TechMates
Kiwi Startup Builds a Bank
You hear a volunteer firefighter explain how he launched a bank during lockdown with no connections and no capital. Jovan Pavlicevic lays out why New Zealand banking is so profitable and so outdated, and how Square One got 200,000 kids learning about money.
- How Jovan launched a fintech startup in the middle of a lockdown.
- Why big banks are untouchable, and how Emerge is breaking in.
- The secret to starting a business with zero connections or capital.
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