Autocheck.tech - Instant auto confidence.
The PPSR is the single, Australian data register where details of financial interests (debts/loans), in personal property like cars can be registered and searched by the public.
Making the PPSR search available is great, getting people to search and understand the data in a meaningful is harder.
At the moment you have to know that PPSR is available and leave the marketplace page (e.g. arsales.com.au) to do the check or pay a big premium on the marketplace for the data. Some of the public may be deterred to do the car check or not even be aware that it is available.
We have integrated the PPSR check directly into the place where most people search to actually buy a used car, online. It's difficult to change peoples behaviour, so we take the friction out of searching on PPSR. We have smashed together the PPSR data sets with Australia's most popular car marketplace carsales.com.au, as well as Carsguide, Gumtree, and Autotrader.
We achieve this through directly with a Google Chrome Extension and we don't require the buy-in of this marketplaces.
We see this as the new PPSR search certificate – relevant knowledge upfront while you browse for cars.
We take the friction out of PPSR searching, so you know upfront if the car you are looking at has any financial or motor risk. And gives you an indicative value to help you with the economic impact of purchasing one of the most expensive single purchases for the public. We think this returns direct financial and social impact to all parties, both the buyers and the sellers.
Team AutoCheck thinks this has the potential to improve/disrupt the way we buy cars and do our checks as the cost of the PPSR check is spread across, so everyone has the benefit with just one person paying for the search, data for everyone, results for the crowd.
We are definitely disrupting dodgy car sellers with data, and ultimately improving public safety and good for community by making consumers more informed, to not be putting resources to dodgy car purchases. Also we are disrupting the marketplace websites themselves, who charge the public about 10x the price for the same report that can be otherwise purchased through the PPSR database.
We are hoping this new way to interact with the PPSR directly is a new way of thinking of government data and useability.
Tech stack wise, we used:
- PSSR dataset
- Chrome extension written in JavaScript
- RESTful API in CakePHP running on Heroku
