BuildFair Brings Payment Custody to Australian Residential Construction with Kobble

BuildFair wanted to give homeowners, builders and subcontractors a safer way to move money through residential construction projects, without becoming a regulated financial institution itself. Kobble gave it the licensed payment infrastructure to launch in under three weeks.

Less than 3 weeks

Time to take BuildFair's custody model from concept to a live MVP

400 clients

BuildFair's target by 2028

$50M

Targeted annual payment volume by 2028

BuildFair is a payment custody platform built for Australian residential construction. It protects homeowner funds, keeps subcontractors paid on time, and gives builders predictable cashflow with less admin.

Introducing BuildFair

Founder Jackson Nunziante built BuildFair to bring structure to a part of the industry that has largely gone without it. Residential construction payments in Australia are still handled through builders' general operating accounts, and that lack of structure creates risk for everyone involved in a build.

The challenge

Payments with no visibility, no protection and no predictability

When a homeowner makes a progress payment, that money typically lands in the builder's general operating account. From there it becomes indistinguishable from every other dollar moving through the business, whether that's payroll, materials, or an unrelated project.

That lack of separation creates risk across the board. Homeowners lose visibility over where their money goes once they hand it over. Subcontractors and tradies often wait weeks to get paid for work they've already completed. Builders, meanwhile, carry cashflow pressure across every active job, financing materials and labour long before payments actually arrive.

BuildFair set out to fix this by rebuilding how money moves through a construction project, without asking builders or homeowners to change the way they work.

The solution

A regulated custody account for every project

Every project on BuildFair gets its own regulated custody account. Homeowner funds sit outside the builder's balance sheet and are held separately until the work they're paying for has been verified and approved. When a progress claim is signed off, payments are released to the builder and subcontractors through the same system.

The result is a cleaner payment flow for every party in the chain. Owners know their money is protected until it's been earned. Builders secure stable, predictable cashflow instead of guessing when funds will land. Subcontractors get paid once the work is done, rather than waiting on someone further up the chain to process it.

To build this, BuildFair needed a partner that could provide the regulated financial infrastructure underneath the product: custody accounts, payment processing, compliance and licensing, all without BuildFair having to become a financial institution itself. That partner was Kobble.

"Construction payments in Australia are broken. We're fixing that. Kobble gave us the financial rails plus the compliance and licensing framework to launch our MVP in weeks without having to become a regulated entity ourselves. We're excited about what we can build together from here." - Jackson Nunziante, Founder, BuildFair

BuildFair's payment infrastructure runs under Kobble's Australian Financial Services Licence, AFSL 545391. That licence covers the custody accounts, payment processing, compliance and day-to-day operations sitting beneath the product, so BuildFair's team can focus on the builder and homeowner experience rather than the regulatory work behind it.

Jackson chose Kobble because he wanted a genuine partnership rather than the arm's length relationship a larger provider might offer. That's core to how Kobble works with its partners. Staying involved through the build and the launch, not handing over an API and moving on.

The result

With Kobble's infrastructure underneath it, BuildFair didn't need to build or license its own financial rails to bring its custody model to market.

BuildFair is now pushing towards 400 clients and an annual payments volume of $50 million by 2028, as it brings a safer, more transparent payment structure to residential construction projects across Australia.

Kobble is looking forward to watching BuildFair grow within its ecosystem and collectively solving the payments challenges within the construction industry.

Learn more about BuildFair at buildfair.com.au

Interested in building with Kobble? Visit kobble.net