After two decades of refining an idea that challenges how companies settle debts, Clearitt founder Richard Johnsson believes the future of business finance may involve moving far less money.
By Mattias Tönnheim
Most entrepreneurs spend years searching for their big idea. For Richard Johnsson, the challenge has been the opposite. The Swedish-born entrepreneur, now an Australian citizen and founder of fintech company Clearitt, has spent more than twenty years trying to bring a single idea into existence.
“It came to me almost fully formed during a highway commute,” he recalls. “The problem wasn’t the idea. The problem was that the world wasn’t ready for it.”
At the heart of Clearitt is a deceptively simple proposition. Businesses owe enormous amounts of money to one another at any given time. In Australia alone, that figure is estimated to be around AUD 470 billion. Johnsson’s argument is that much of this debt already cancels itself out within the broader economy.
Rather than every company paying every invoice individually, Clearitt’s platform enables businesses to net obligations across multiple trading partners simultaneously, settling only the remaining balance.
“What already exists between businesses largely offsets itself,” he explains. “Only the net amount actually needs to move as cash.”
The concept, which the company calls Universal Contra-Accounts, aims to reduce friction in business payments by allowing obligations to be cleared more efficiently across networks of companies. Johnsson describes the core mechanism as “the Linux of business finance” — an open piece of infrastructure designed to support a larger ecosystem rather than extract value at every step.
An Unconventional Founder
Johnsson does not fit the mould of a typical fintech executive. While many founders speak fluently about customer acquisition costs, lifetime value metrics, and growth hacks, he is equally comfortable discussing philosophy, consciousness, and systems theory.
“I’ve always been drawn to the ideas that don’t yet have a name,” he says.
That intellectual curiosity has shaped much of his career. In fact, he hesitates to describe it as a career at all. One story captures his approach particularly well.
After reaching a point where he felt stuck professionally, he walked down to a beach one evening and shouted into the darkness: “Universe, come to me.” The next day, a headhunter called and offered him a CEO position in Beijing.
“I accepted immediately,” he says.
The story sounds almost too improbable to be true, yet it reflects a recurring theme throughout his life: a willingness to embrace uncertainty when a path feels authentic. That mindset has led him across countries, industries and leadership roles, often taking decisions that appeared irrational to those around him. At one point, he left a senior executive position and moved overseas with a wife and three children despite having no job lined up.
“I told everyone I did have a job waiting,” he admits. “To most people it would have sounded completely crazy. But staying would have meant living the wrong life.”
Building for Timing, Not Technology
Although the core concept behind Clearitt has remained largely unchanged since its inception, Johnsson believes the technological environment has only recently matured enough to support it. Twenty years ago, there were no cloud platforms, no modern APIs, no smartphones and none of the interconnected systems that now underpin digital commerce.
“The infrastructure simply didn’t exist,” he says.
What has changed is not the vision itself but the tools available to execute it. Artificial intelligence has accelerated that process even further.
Johnsson openly acknowledges that AI has transformed the way he works, reducing development cycles dramatically and allowing him to move directly from concept to implementation. In one instance, the departure of a key software developer initially appeared to be a major setback. Instead, it became a turning point.
“I realized I could do much of the work myself using AI tools,” he says. “It removed the distance between the idea in my head and the product.”
Challenging Conventional Startup Thinking
Some of Clearitt’s most important strategic decisions have gone against accepted startup wisdom. Perhaps the most significant was making the platform free. Early on, Johnsson found himself drawn into the familiar language of startup finance: customer acquisition costs, recurring revenue, and early monetization.
Eventually, he concluded that those models did not fit a network-based platform whose value increases as participation grows.
“The moment I stopped trying to force conventional metrics onto the business, everything became clearer,” he says.
For Johnsson, growth depends less on extracting revenue from early users and more on creating a critical mass of participation. The philosophy reflects a broader pattern in his thinking: systems first, monetization second.
Clearitt founder Richard Johnsson
Leadership Through Alignment
Despite his reputation as a visionary thinker, Johnsson describes himself as fundamentally a team player. Throughout his life, he has often gravitated toward leadership positions, whether in sport or business. His leadership philosophy centres on alignment rather than hierarchy.
“The people who join us are there because they want the vision to happen,” he says.
That approach was tested during his years managing teams in China. Aware that cultural norms often discouraged employees from openly challenging authority, he deliberately encouraged dissent. In one memorable example, he instructed his assistant to publicly disagree with him during meetings.
“I wanted people to see that disagreement was welcome,” he explains. “I valued different opinions. But once a decision was made, I expected everyone to commit to it.”
Endurance Above All
Like many founders, Johnsson describes prolonged financial uncertainty as the hardest part of entrepreneurship. Operating on limited resources while maintaining momentum can be exhausting, particularly when employees and their families are relying on the company’s future success.
“It’s not just your own situation,” he says. “You know that other people have mortgages, partners and children. That responsibility stays with you.”
Yet after more than two decades developing the concept behind Clearitt, he remains remarkably calm about the outcome. His confidence appears rooted less in ambition than in conviction.
“I’ve been the custodian of this idea for a long time,” he says. “My role is simply to do my best to bring it into the world.”
Looking Beyond the Horizon
Ask Johnsson about his ultimate ambitions and he offers a surprising answer. Clearitt, he says, is not even his biggest idea.
“There is another one,” he says with a smile. “Even larger.”
For now, however, his focus remains firmly on building the company and proving that a different approach to business payments is possible. As for the legacy he hopes to leave behind, he rejects the premise altogether.
“I didn’t come here to build a legacy,” he says.
“I’m perfectly happy if, at the end, I can say I completed my mission — or at least gave it everything I had.”
Whether Clearitt succeeds in reshaping business finance remains to be seen.
But after twenty years of persistence, Johnsson appears less concerned with recognition than with execution. For a founder who has spent decades carrying a single idea, that may be the most authentic measure of success.