Slang from downunder

Here at NexPay we’re focused on making life for international students fairer and simpler.

One of the things that many students have told us they find challenging to understand when they first arrive in Australia is Australian slang.

To help students navigate through Australian slang, we’ve put together a list of ten widely used slang phrases and words and we try to explain them in “normal” English.

1. “Ankle biter” means “a small child”
2. “Arvo” means “afternoon”
3. “Coathanger” (for those visiting Sydney) means “the Sydney Harbour Bridge”
4. “Esky” means “an insulated food/drinks container for picnics and barbecues designed to keep the contents cold”
5. “Fair dinkum” means “true and genuine”
6. “Fair go” means “to give someone/something a chance”
7. “G’day” means “hello”
8. “She’ll be right” means “everything will turn out fine and there is nothing to worry about”
9. “Shiela” means “woman”
10. “Sticky wicket” means “being in a tough situation”

 We hope your stay in Australia proves to be a highly memorable experience and that the above list makes it a little easier for you to understand what the locals are saying.

Launching NexPay

After over a year of hard work and a whole lot of fun, we're delighted to launch NexPay  (www.nexpay.com.au)

It's been an interesting journey for us. The idea of NexPay was dreamed up by Jerry and myself over a year ago, and it was inspired by a couple of things

1) Jerry was looking to import some items from overseas for a renovation and was getting a horrible exchange rate

2) I was all too familiar with the cost of FX having moved over from NZ, and my girlfriend moved from overseas and had to pay her Masters course fees

Being in the finance sector, both Jerry and I fully understood the reasons behind the bid-ask spread for foreign exchange, but what we struggled to understand was just how much money the existing providers were making, especially from international students.  For a typical international student who has to pay ~$25,000 in fees for a year (and sometimes a lot more!), the foreign exchange component alone was costing them A$1,250 - just to pay their fees! And we thought this simply wasn't fair. And so we decided to do something about it and NexPay was born.

NexPay was founded on simple philosophy - we want to make NexPay the simplest and fairest way for international students to pay their fees.  By using NexPay, students are able to save ~A$1,000 on their fees - but not only that, students are able to track their payment through time. In addition to this, NexPay offers a secure platform with all our bank accounts being segregated from our corporate accounts, and we hold insurance allowing us to guarantee that payments will reach the institutions once we receive them.

We've been incredibly fortunate to have received some strong support from a number of people in getting NexPay off the ground. 

- In September 2012, we raised our first round of capital at a multi-million dollar valuation, led by Professor Jilnaught Wong, the Deputy Dean at the University of Auckland Business School.  

- Throughout the year, we've had the pleasure of meeting with senior management at some of Australia and New Zealand's leading Universities and we're looking forward to continuing to develop our relationships with these institutions.

-We're thrilled to have an Advisory Committee that consists of Andrew Mills, one of Australia's leaders in private education and Mark Cummins, an innovator and currently working with Google. 

- Lastly, we've been incredibly fortunate to have received significant support from a large number of international students, with whom we had focus group sessions. The level of support and encouragement we received from the focus groups was tremendous - so good, that we've decided to launch the Ambassador Programme, where international students help to spread the word of NexPay to their peers.

As part of our Blog NexTravels, we'll be posting updates on our progress and also any tidbits of learnings we come across. If you have any comments or suggestions, please do let us know!

We look forward to serving international students as we work to reduce the cost of education for international students throughout the world!

 

Dipra and Jerry