Pushpay gets $960,000 R&D grant from Callaghan to help scale up payment platform

Pushpay Holdings has confirmed it is eligible for a $960,000 research and development grant from Callaghan Innovation that will help mobile payments app developer scale up the platform that allows US church congregations to easily make donations.

“This funding provides additional resources to deliver scale and growth in the Pushpay platform through the development of new features, new markets, and scalable engineering processes and practices,” chief executive Chris Heaslip said in a statement.

Callaghan R&D grants allow smaller companies to claim back between 30 percent and 50 percent of their own R&D spending – in Pushpay’s case 40 percent of the $2.4 million of approved spending over 17 months. The Auckland-based company is chasing sales growth at the expense of profits, posting a loss of $7.5 million in the year ended March 31, on a six-fold jump in sales to $12.7 million.

As well as Callaghan funding it has tapped shareholders for additional support including a one-for-14 share offer in May that raised $13.8 million. More than one third of the company is owned by interests associated with the Huljich and Bhatnagar families.

This month the company announced a tentative new referral contract with Church Community Builder to lift the number of churches which use Pushpay’s system to collect money from parishioners.

Pushpay is targeting the US faith sector for growth where there are more than 314,000 churches with an average 500 attendees each.

The shares last traded at $4.15 and have soared 183 percent in the past 12 months.

(Disclosure: BusinessDesk receives funding from Callaghan to assist in the coverage of the commercialisation of innovation)

(BusinessDesk)