Fintech Headlines
January 2020
The Startup News Asia monthly collection for January 2020, collecting fintech news, banking tech news and digital payments news from across South and SE Asia, Australia and NZ, with wider-world items included to provide reference, points of interest and need-to-know industry insights.
The fintech news collection below represents a ‘wide angle’ overview of the fintech space, rather than one focused on a particular sub-area of banking technology news; bitcoin and cryptocurrency news is gathered separately, as is our blockchain news summary, both listed in other tech news.
- IFTA FinTech Achievement Awards applications close January 20th, spanning 26 categories in financial innovation
- ICYMI: European Central Bank explores how a central bank digital currency could be designed primarily for payments, and to discourage use as a store of value
- A Beginner’s Guide to Decentralized Finance, from Coinbase
- ASEAN needs smart regulation to boost financial inclusion: “In Southeast Asia, there are approximately 470 million people without bank accounts, or 73% of the region”
- Cash is gradually dying out. Will we ever have a digital alternative that offers the same mix of convenience and freedom?
- In brief: 10 examples of AI in banking, covering lending, customer service, fraud detection and more
- FinTech in ASEAN: From Start-up to Scale-up – whitepaper available to download, from UOB
- TransferGo account-to-account remittance firm partners Currencycloud global payments platform for cross-border payments in 14 new markets over Q1 2020
- …this signals the potential for a shift to a new payments system outside our current one. Firms should underestimate Facebook at their peril.
- An overview of the moves made by fintechs to compete with, and potentially beat, banks at their own game
- ICYMI: 6 central banks form working group with Bank of International Settlements to share findings as each investigates use cases for central bank digital currencies
- Square payments provider, founded by Twitter CEO, secures US patent for network enabling seamless crypto-to-fiat transactions
- AI, fintech, ‘longevity banks’ and other impacts of the approaching demographic shift represented by 1BN citizens over the age of 60
- Four digital banking trends having an impact across ASEAN
- Australia: An intro to Groupee, real-time payments app allowing groups to share the cost of a purchase, via prepaid Visa card
- Australia: Banxa digital banking infrastructure provider raises $2M Series A
- Bitcoin is first and foremost a monetary phenomenon….The world did not need another Paypal. The world needed a new monetary institution.
- ICYMI: NBA star Dinwiddie aims to digitally tokenize 3-year, $34.36M contract, allowing him to collect value up-front, instead of across incremental payments
- ICYMI: China’s Hainan island opened its doors to foreign investment and crypto exchanges – offshore digital-asset lab, policy testing ground, sandbox?
- China: Tencent and state-owned UnionPay to merge QR code systems for mobile payments, with testing already underway on Android devices in Fuzhou city
- China: Shanghai outlines 5-year fintech action plan built around 25 major tasks covering five key areas, aiming for global finance center status
- China: Xiaomi gains regulator approval to establish consumer finance firm in Chongqing
- Video: Inside The Cryptocurrency Revolution, from VICE News
- ICYMI: New York cryptocurrency preps for launch as a form of hyper-localized digital cash, running on a peer-to-peer payments platform; but not a truly distributed ledger
- Following PayPal service loss, Pornhub adds performer payment options including the tether stablecoin and recommends TRONlink wallet
- Hong Kong: MioTech fintech startup continues growth, with AI-driven service to evaluate ESG investments for fund managers
- Hong Kong: Two Prime aims to leverage token sale model to back investments in real-world assets, using ‘Continuous Token Offering’ approach
- India: epiFi, fintech founded by ex-Google Pay execs, raises $13.2M in seed round for wide-service neo-banking platform focused on millenials
- India: Fintech app adoption continues growth thru 2019, with Google Pay the top app with 36M new downloads in 2019
- India: Mastercard partners Pine Labs merchant commerce platform for card and real-time payments-based instalment financing at checkouts, in-store and online
- Indonesia’s central bank reportedly may impose fixed fees on some e-wallet transactions
- Indonesia: Akseleran fintech startup raises $8.55M Series A with MSME-focused peer-to-peer lending
- Philippines: Tonik Digital Bank receives banking license from Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, the country’s monetary authority, with digital-only services
- Singapore: A look at how GrabPay Mastercard compares to other credit and debit cards
- Money20/20 Asia Startup Pitch competition applications close January 29th, with shortlisted startups presenting at main event in Singapore in March
- Singapore: Singapura Finance believed to have partnered with MatchMove Pay digital payments startup to pursue digital bank license
- Singapore: Klub fintech startup raises $2M pre-seed to provide growth financing to high-affinity brands across sectors including F&B and direct-to-consumer
- Thailand: Finnomena fintech firm raises $10M with digital wealth management platform; sets sights on SEA expansion
- Vietnam: A look at the coming year’s opportunities for Vietnam in e-commerce, fintech, AI and SaaS technologies
- Japan: “…open banking would put Japan in the company of the UK and Australia, which are freeing up data access to spur competition and create innovative financial solutions”
- ICYMI: Central Bank of the Bahamas is piloting digital Bahamian dollar – Bahamas Sand Dollar – placing it in the race to be first digital currency by a central bank
- Decentralized finance: If you lock up bitcoin in exchange for a synthetic asset or stablecoin, is that a trade or merely a temporary reorganizing of the original asset?
- Thailand: Lightnet blockchain-based fintech secures $31.2M series A funding with sights set on migrant workers and the global remittances market
- China: People’s Bank of China, the country’s central bank, claims top-level design of national digital currency has been completed
- Download: Bank for International Settlements report – Impending arrival, a sequel to the survey on central bank digital currency (pdf)
- South Korea: Presidential Committee considers allowing financial institutions to offer cryptocurrency products such as derivatives
- Australia: TAGZ crypto exchange grows user base to more than 480K active users, overtaking Binance and Coinbase as largest crypto exchange by trade volume
- Australian Prudential Regulation Authority has suggested better accommodations for digital wallets, payment services and other stored-value facilities
- Huobi Indonesia adds fiat-to-crypto gateway, increasing offering to 250 cryptocurrencies
- Singapore: A look at the Payment Services Act, new payments legislation offering global cryptocurrency firms a chance to expand their business in the city-state
- Hong Kong: ZA Bank digital-only bank offers introductory rate of 6% or higher for deposits, beating offerings from HSBC and Standard Chartered
- Malaysia: Central bank to issue up to 5 licences to online banks offering conventional or Islamic banking under proposed licensing framework
- Singapore: Digital banking license race heats up, with 21 applicants – 7 applying for retail bank licences, 14 for wholesale banks – for 5 licenses available
- ICYMI: New York Inclusive Value Ledger – A Peer-to-Peer Savings & Payments Platform for an All-Embracing and Dynamic State Economy (pdf link)
- Indonesia: Will credit cards be overtaken by PayLater services in 2020, given 2019’s adoption by mobile wallet and e-commerce players?
- Australia: Reserve Bank believes it is unclear whether there will be strong demand for global stablecoins, particularly for domestic payments
- Australia: Fintech startups Afterpay, Raiz, Brighte and 86 400 on the issues and obstacles facing the country’s fintechs
- China suspends planned cross-border listings partnership between Shanghai and London Stock Exchanges amid political tensions over Hong Kong protests
- Singapore’s iSTOX gains $5M from Korea’s Hanwha Asset Mgmt with regulated platform for issuance, settlement, custody and secondary trading of digitised securities
- Singapore’s Digicro lending startup expands to Cambodia, providing the unbanked population with access to mobile app-driven microloans
- India: A look at the 4 startups that made it to Y Combinator’s Startup School 2019 grant recipient list
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