Paagaa: from an adviser referral tool to an open banking budgeting app
Willie and Natalie Leota have spent 18 years in conversations about money. We built their first product - a referral platform for financial professionals - and then grew it into Paagaa, a New Zealand budgeting app built on open banking, for people who hate budgeting.
- Client
- Willie and Natalie Leota (Fresh Moni)
- Built
- Adviser referral platform, then the Paagaa app
- Our role
- Build and ongoing development
- Status
- Paagaa is taking waitlist sign-ups ahead of launch
The brief
Willie, a former mortgage adviser, noticed that the advisers he talked to had no real system for sending, receiving or tracking referrals. The first brief was a referral platform where financial professionals across New Zealand and Australia could refer clients to each other, track what happened and collaborate securely.
It started as a prototype. We rebuilt it on a production stack and had the core features working three weeks after the first commit.
Two products, one build partner
- January - February 2026
The referral platform
Google sign-in, a kanban board to track every referral, adviser connections with encrypted messaging, email notifications, a public adviser marketplace and an admin portal.
- June - August 2026
The Paagaa app
Read-only open banking through BlinkPay, spending and goals, and messaging between people and their adviser. The first live bank connection went through in August 2026.
- Now
Heading to launch
Paagaa is taking waitlist sign-ups, with the first month free at launch.
Where AI helps, and where it deliberately doesn't
Money advice has to be right. So AI does the writing, and plain code does the maths and checks the AI's work.
Plans written by AI
Claude writes budgets, debt plans, goal roadmaps and money snapshots from the person's own figures.
Every number checked
Each number in an AI-written plan is checked against the figures the app calculated. If anything doesn't match, the app falls back to a template.
Only totals leave the server
The AI works from aggregated figures, not raw bank transactions.
Categories built for real lives
Spending categories are rules-based, not AI guesses, and include cultural categories like koha, fa'alavelave, tithing and remittances.
The coach never recommends a financial product.
Built for bank data
- Bank access is read-only - Paagaa can see money, never move it.
- Multi-factor authentication is required for anything that touches bank data.
- An append-only log records every time bank data is accessed.
- People can delete their own data.
- Messages between advisers are encrypted.
In their words
Blake took the time to understand our vision and explained the technical side in a way that was easy to follow, making the whole process simple and stress-free. He took a complex idea and turned it into something practical, clear and user-friendly. Great work, great communication, and a great experience from start to finish.
Building a fintech product?
Open banking, adviser tools, AI that has to get the numbers right. We build it with the guardrails in from day one.
Last updated 19 September 2026