Afterpay's Anthony Eisen and Nick Molnar
It was a ‘Rear Window’ moment that brought together two would-be fintech billionaires, the creators of a payments system that is changing Australians’ spending habits.
During 2010, Sydney businessman Anthony Eisen often worked late at night from his home office in leafy Bellevue Hill.
As director of London-listed investment house GPG PLC, formerly known as Guinness Peat Group, Eisen kept unsociable hours in Sydney to connect with his British colleagues a dozen time zones away. But he wasn’t the only one awake in the middle of the night.
From his study, Eisen could see into the bedroom of his neighbour Nick Molnar, a Sydney University commerce student. Eisen was intrigued about what the young student was doing, lights blazing, long after the neighbourhood had bedded down, and wondered if he might be privy to some sort of international racket.
“I saw him near every night,” Eisen says. “I thought I was the only maniac who worked so late. There were these late nights on the phone and at his computer, then packages moving in the morning, all this sort of stuff.
