It started with two mates, and one simple question: Why do kiwis struggle to teach kids about money? From that moment, SquareOne was born. We believed financial literacy shouldn’t be theoretical—it should be lived.

You don’t learn rugby by reading the rulebook. You learn by getting on the field, getting tackled, showing up every weekend in the rain, the mud, the sun. The same is true of money.

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That idea shaped a movement. SquareOne now helps over 200,000 Kiwi parents and kids build real-world financial skills. We’ve become (dare we say it) the incumbent in youth banking in New Zealand. Not because we followed the rules, but because we created a new playbook.

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And yet, even as SquareOne grew, we realised something bigger: Kids were learning how money should work. But their parents? Their businesses? They were still stuck in the old system.

So, Emerge was born.

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From revolution at home, to rebellion in business banking.

Twelve months ago, we launched Emerge. Hard and fast—because small businesses didn’t have time to wait. From the very beginning, we built for speed, simplicity, and substance. Accounts that open in minutes. Tools that save time. No branches. No paperwork. No fuss.

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And we didn’t just say we were different—we proved it.

• Over $10 million in deposits within months
• Hundreds of businesses onboarded
• A team that ships features faster than most banks ship emails
• Products like EmergeID, batch payments, and multi-sign controls built in-house, in record time
• And maybe a few cheeky stunts along the way (Simon Bridges in a drift car - have we peaked?...)

This all goes to show that banking can be better.

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What we’ve learned.

We’ve been inside the beast now. We know the friction. Regulatory roadblocks, infrastructure built decades ago, and capital requirements so high they keep competition out by design.

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And still—despite it all—we’ve kept building. Because someone has to challenge how things have always been done. Someone has to show what happens when you design for people, not policy. We’re not saying it’s easy. We’re saying it’s worth it.

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Now, a year in, we're more convicted than ever. We’ve done it for kids. We’re doing it for businesses. And if you’ve been watching closely, it’s not hard to guess where we’re going next.

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This has never been about one product or one problem. This has always been about building the next-generation financial ecosystem for Aotearoa—one that serves you from your first chore to your first company, and everything in between.

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But if we want better banking, we need more than just great products.

We need a shift in thinking. We need regulators brave enough to back innovation.

We have the talent. And the ideas. We just need a system that wants to move.

Because if we do this right, New Zealand can go from lagging behind to leapfrogging global markets. 

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So where to from here?

We’re building a financial movement. We’re not here to be loud for the sake of it. We’re here to shift the landscape. To give Kiwis a real choice. To challenge the majors not just with tech—but with trust, with transparency, with energy.

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The next phase? It’s our biggest swing yet. To everyone who’s backed us—customers, investors, team, community—thank you. You’ve helped us prove that change is possible, even in an industry designed to resist it.

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We’re not done. Not even close. Let’s keep building.

– Jovan, Jamie & the Emerge team

 April 2025