The Surry Hills Fintech Helping Ordinary Sydneysiders Fight Back Against Cost-of-Living Pressure

Kayla Merchant launched Stackwise Financial from a co-working desk on Crown Street in late 2024 with $180,000 in seed funding and a pitch built entirely around one problem: most Australians have no idea how much their spending decisions cost them in compounding terms over ten years. By July 2026, the Surry Hills-based platform has signed up more than 34,000 active users across New South Wales and is processing roughly $2.1 billion in linked account transactions monthly.

The timing could not be more pointed. Australia's property market is seizing up at both ends, investors spooked by state government budget measures have pulled back sharply from Melbourne, while nationally, first-home buyer enquiry has gone soft despite prices cooling in several capital cities. In Sydney, the median dwelling value still sits above $1.17 million according to CoreLogic's June 2026 figures, making the dream of ownership feel arithmetically absurd to anyone earning under $120,000. Into that anxiety, Stackwise has positioned itself not as a mortgage broker or a get-rich-quick scheme, but as something quieter and arguably more useful: a structured savings and micro-investment coach that works around irregular incomes and high rent burdens.

Building the Product Around Western Sydney Realities

Merchant, who grew up in Blacktown and worked for seven years as a financial counsellor at the Western Sydney Community Forum in Parramatta, says she built the product's logic around clients she actually knew. The platform's core feature, called a "Cost Horizon" calculator, shows users not just what they spend each week but what each recurring expense, a $22 gym membership, a $6.50 oat flat white from a café on King Street, Newtown, represents in foregone investment value at age 65, assuming a 7 per cent annual return. It is a deliberately uncomfortable number. For a $180-a-month streaming and subscription bundle, that foregone value sits around $94,000 over 30 years.

The company works with two Sydney-based community organisations to offer a subsidised version of the platform: the Salvation Army's Doorways financial support program, which operates out of offices in Liverpool, and the Good Shepherd financial resilience service on Parramatta Road, Granville. Both organisations have integrated Stackwise into their client intake process since March 2026. Users referred through those channels pay nothing; the cost is covered through a corporate partnership program that Stackwise sells to employers under a workplace financial wellness model.

Numbers That Tell the Story

The Reserve Bank of Australia lifted the cash rate to 4.1 per cent in late 2025 before holding it through the first half of 2026, meaning high-yield savings accounts at institutions like Macquarie Bank and ING are sitting at around 5.3 per cent for balances above $1,000. Stackwise's own data from its user base shows that within 90 days of signing up, the average member increases their monthly savings by $347, not through dramatic lifestyle overhaul, but by redirecting spending from categories the platform flags as high-frequency and low-satisfaction.

The company also launched a feature in May 2026 called Round-Up Reserve, which funnels spare change from debit card purchases into a separately held account invested in diversified exchange-traded funds through a partnership with Sydney-based investment administrator Superhero. The average Round-Up deposit per user runs at $43 a week, modest, but across 34,000 users it represents a serious flow of retail investment capital being built from the bottom up rather than from existing wealth.

Stackwise is not the first app to chase this space. Raiz, which pioneered micro-investing in Australia, has been operating since 2016. But Merchant's team argues the differentiation is in the financial literacy layer beneath the product, the Cost Horizon framing, rather than just the mechanics of rounding up spare change.

The company is currently in due diligence on a Series A round targeting $6 million, according to documents lodged with ASIC in June 2026, with interest from at least two Sydney-based venture funds including Investible, which operates out of offices on York Street in the CBD. If that raise closes on schedule in the September quarter, Merchant plans to expand the Good Shepherd and Salvation Army subsidy program to Brisbane and Melbourne. For Sydneysiders watching property prices with exhaustion rather than excitement, Stackwise's pitch is simple: you may not be able to control the market, but you can control $43 a week.