Fintech news: April 2020
A broad catch-all collection of April 2020‘s fintech and banking technology news from across Asia and Oceania, with wider-world items as reference and points of interest.
Links below represent the ‘wide angle’ view of fintech, rather than focusing on a particular sub-area of banking-related technology news; bitcoin and cryptocurrency news is gathered separately, as is our blockchain news summary, which we list in other tech news.
- COVID-19: “Use of contactless mobile payments – services that once struggled to catch on…is surging as people come to see their phones as the safer way to pay”
- World FinTech Report 2020: “70% of fintechs don’t culturally or organisationally see eye-to-eye with their bank partner”
- ICYMI: In response to US EARN IT Act which aims to abolish end-to-end encryption, developer builds uncensorable messaging system using Bitcoin Cash transactions
- Google developing its own physical and virtual debit cards and associated checking accounts, allowing users to buy via card, mobile phone or online
- A deep dive into the messy realities of UBI, universal basic income
- ICYMI: Microsoft partners Plaid to turn Excel into an API-powered fintech app, delivering direct bank account integration via Money In Excel
- Asia Reserve Currency Coin gains $3.48M seed funding from Int’l Blockchain Monetary Reserve, aiming for financial inclusion for the urban working poor in SE Asia
- A brief look at 10 coronavirus-focused fintech and banking initiatives implemented by governments and regulators
- Australia: Eftpos digital ID trial approaches, aiming to provide a ‘smoother, faster and more secure onboarding experience, including for government services’
- China: Starbucks and McDonald’s reportedly among 19 restaurants and retail stores to be involved in testing central bank digital currency in Xiong’An new district
- China: Ksher mobile payments aggregator secures $10M with over 100K merchants, annual transaction volume of over $1BN, POS solutions and more
- China: dForce Foundation secures $1.5M seed funding with Lendf, platform for lending fiat-backed stablecoins, and synthetic fiat stablecoin USDx
- Cryptocurrency: BTCPay, open source tool for accepting bitcoin payments, to partner PayJoin to preserve two-way privacy of transactions
- Binance crypto exchange launches Binance Loans to allow users to leverage crypto assets as collateral for instant-approval, low-interest borrowing
- Facebook’s proposed Libra project will no longer be a standalone coin; instead a ‘digital composite of some of the single-currency stablecoins available on the Libra network’
- ICYMI: Financial Stability Board publishes 10 high-level recommendations to address ‘regulatory, supervisory and oversight challenges’ of stablecoins
- ICYMI: A look at Fold, crypto-focused startup with newly-launched Visa card offering cash back rewards in Bitcoin
- ICYMI: The Bank of England is open to the possibility that private cryptocurrencies may have a role in the future of money, with private companies as issuers
- Hong Kong: Oriente raises $50M with focus on tech infrastructure for digital credit and online financial services, backed in part by Wix web-dev platform
- Hong Kong: Airstar Bank, JV between China’s Xiaomi and AMTD Group corporate finance house, launches pilot for its virtual banking service
- Hong Kong: Neat fintech gains Visa as investor in $11M funding round, with sights in part set on the next generation of Neat credit cards for businesses
- India: YAP, API infrastructure startup, raises $4.5M Series A, providing digital payments infrastructure to over fintech firms
- India: Recko fintech startup raises $6M, aiming to streamline and automate payments reconciliation across transaction lifecycle and commercial contracts
- India: Recko enterprise fintech secures $6M Series A with artificial intelligence to reconcile digital transactions
- Indonesia: Facebook in partnership talks with GoPay, Ovo and LinkAja to launch Facebook Pay mobile payments
- Indonesia: US startup, Fairbanc, preps for launch of AI-powered mobile loan and payments platform for SMEs, following initial testing in Bangladesh and Indonesia
- Indonesia: BukuWarung MSME-focused accounting app gains funding, helping 250K clients digitize their bookkeeping in more than 500 towns and cities
- Indonesia: KoinWorks raises $20M with financial P2P platform for SMEs, with plans for 8 new services
- Japan: Mizuho Bank partners Google Cloud Japan and others to launch proof-of-concept trial for biometric digital ID system to improve online customer authentication
- Japan: Kyash digital banking startup raises $45M with digital payments focus and Visa tie-in
- Japan: Paidy fintech raises $48M with focus on allowing customers to make online purchases without credit cards
- South Korea: An intro to 3 startups working on overseas remittances and money transfers
- Philippines: Voyager Innovations gains $120M with mobile money and payments platform PayMaya and Smart Padala brand, aiming for local growth
- Singapore Fintech Association and Razer Fintech partner for COVID-19 Support Fund to help business partners through negative impacts of coronavirus
- Singapore Management University partners Tradeteq, UK-based electronic trading platform focused on trade finance, for quantum computing-based credit scoring
- Singtel’s subsidiary, NCS, partners Network for Electronic Transfers to develop real-time e-payment and securities-settlement platform for central banks in Asia-Pacific
- Thailand: Siam Commercial Bank to launch cross-border payments powered by Ripple, aimed at migrant workers from across Southeast Asia
- Thailand: UK’s Azimo money transfer service partnered by Siam Commercial Bank to provide instant payments for European customers to SCB accounts in Thailand
- Another look at Universal Basic Income, and how central banks could use digital cash to deliver it when faced with situations like COVID-19’s impact on employment
- Vietnam: GPay gains 10-year license to provide e-payment portals and payments, digital money transfer and eWallet services
- Vietnam: Finhay fintech gains backing from Acorns co-founder with approach allowing users to start investments with as little as $2 of idle money
- An intro to 13 female founders and entrepreneurs from SE Asia, working in fintech, e-commerce, proptech and more
- Vietnam: An intro to Kilimo Finance, app-delivered lending platform aiming to improve financial access for smallholder farmers
- India: Fingpay raises $3.5M Series A with range of payment solutions and points-of-contact for merchants and customers
- Hong Kong: Venture Smart Asia launches HK’s first approved crypto fund with” target first-year size of $100M, offering a window for institutional investors into Bitcoin
- South Korea: A brief intro to MOIN, blockchain-backed remittance startup offering money transfer services for 29 countries
- Singapore’s NIUM fintech platform partners Geoswift to allow customers to remit money directly into bank accounts in China via UnionPay
- Huawei partners China’s UnionPay bank card clearing service provider to launch Huawei Pay service in Singapore
- India: A brief look at survey results from Paxful, peer-to-peer bitcoin marketplace, gauging interest in and concerns around cryptocurrency
- Crypto: A dive into the proposed Schnorr/Taproot upgrade for Bitcoin, major improvement to privacy, scaling, speed of transactions and cost of processing
- South Korea: Binance KR crypto-to-crypto exchange launches, offering Binance KRW stablecoin backed by the South Korean Won
- South Korea: Central bank begins pilot program aimed at identifying technical and legal provisions required to create and issue a digital currency
- India: Paytm Payments Bank partners Mastercard to issue physical and virtual debit cards, enabling contactless in-store transactions, ATM cash withdrawals globally and more
- Sri Lanka: A brief intro to iLoan, representing Sri Lanka at Seedstars World Summit with tech-backed credit assessment for SMEs
- Hong Kong-based AsiaPay partners Plug and Play global innovation platform for tie-in with Plug and Play fintech program in Singapore
- Indonesia’s Modalku P2P lender (Funding Societies in Singapore) raises $40M in part to aid loans restructuring by MSMEs affected by COVID-19
- Hong Kong: Start-up Express preps for 3rd edition for startups in AI, robotics, big data, biotech, IoT, fintech and smart cities
- India: KarbonCard raises $1M with corporate solutions providing credit access to early-stage startups
- A deep dive into chatbots in their many forms and implementations, from rudimentary yes-no phone-trees to AI-driven virtual assistants
- 2C2P, a Singapore-HQ’d payments platform, launches investments arm, aiming for strategic investments in firms in payments and related sectors
- India: A brief intro to 5 of the country’s female entrepreneurs working in the fintech space
- Digimentality: Fear And Favouring Of Digital Currency – A study of digital ways to pay and the evolution of a cashless future, from The Economist
- China: Suzhou municipal government employees to receive 50% of their May transportation subsidies in DCEP digital currency as state-owned banks step up testing
- ICYMI: Indonesia Pasti Bisa crowdfunding movement initiated by East Ventures VC firm to support development of COVID-19 test kits to fight coronavirus pandemic
- China: State-owned Agricultural Bank of China now trialing test front-end interface for the country’s central bank digital currency
- Indonesia’s Gojek, ride-hailing and food-delivery giant, acquires Moka mobile point-of-sale payments startup for $130M
- Philippines: An intro to the 5 Filipino leaders and entrepreneurs featured in this year’s Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia list
- Indonesia’s Investree plans peer-to-peer lending services expansion to Thailand and Philippines following $23.5M fundraise
- Vietnam: An intro to 6 of the country’s entrepreneurs selected for the latest edition of the Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia list
- Indonesia: Qoala insurtech startup raises $13.5M Series A, benefiting from prominent brand partnerships
- EY Global Blockchain Summit 2020 set for April 21-23, online, covering the technology, applications and implications in taxation and beyond
- Webinar: Coindesk analysts talk about the upcoming Bitcoin halving event – online April 21st
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