Banking Tech: April 2021
Startup News Asia’s April 2021 fintech news summary pulls together banking technology headlines across subjects including Korea’s moves towards a digital currency, fintech-based lending in China, India’s United Payments Interface developments, NFTs and many more.
April 2021’s fintech news summary provides a wide-angle view of fintech headlines from the month, drawn from Startup News Asia’s daily mobile and social feeds; each fintech headline below links you directly to the online article behind it, free to read, online, in full. This gives financial technology enthusiasts two things instantly:
- an at-a-glance look at significant fintech news from April 2021; and
- one-click access to each banking tech article in full.
You can also get fintech news every day
from our social media links – check the foot of this page.
More Fintech news:
FinTech news in 2021 • FinTech news in 2020
- ICYMI: Rewire fintech gains $20M Series B with cross-border online banking services focusing on SEA expatriate workers and OFWs worldwide
- Inaugural Visa Accelerator Program in Asia Pacific selects 5 startups for development, working in open banking, real-time payments and more
- ICYMI: AB InBev Beer Garage APAC & Africa Hub to launch 3 editions of BudStart Global Accelerator 2021 programme for startups – Global Fintech, APAC and Africa
- Fintech: A video snapshot of recent fintech and banking technology news headlines, outlining developments across SE Asia and Oceania
- “From payments and lending to insurance and checking accounts, Amazon is attacking financial services from every angle without even applying to be a conventional bank…”
- Download: Pulse of Fintech H2 2020, from KPMG (pdf)
- ICYMI: South African lender Nedbank launches Mastercard-backed service, Money Message, allowing payments via WhatsApp
- Asia FinTech Awards set for 28th April, live-streamed online
- ICYMI: Rewire fintech gains $20M Series B with cross-border online banking services focusing on SEA expatriate workers and OFWs worldwide
- Inaugural Visa Accelerator Program in Asia Pacific selects 5 startups for development, working in open banking, real-time payments and more
- Fintech: A video snapshot of recent fintech and banking technology news headlines, outlining developments across SE Asia and Oceania
- “From payments and lending to insurance and checking accounts, Amazon is attacking financial services from every angle without even applying to be a conventional bank…”
- Download: Pulse of Fintech H2 2020, from KPMG (pdf)
- Asia FinTech Awards set for 28th April, live-streamed online
- Bank of Japan launches first phase of experimenting with a central bank digital currency, testing technical feasibility of core functions and features
- South Korea: Klaytn blockchain firm partners with ConsenSys to work towards a Korean central bank digital currency, a digital won
- Bank of Thailand announces intention to develop a retail central bank digital currency, provisionally aiming for trials in Q2 2022
- Download: Central Bank Digital Currency – The Future of Payments for Corporates, from the Bank of Thailand’s Project Inthanon (pdf)
- ICYMI: UK launches central bank digital currency taskforce with the Bank of England to investigate the potential of a digitally-issued currency
- “Fintech lending is at peak proliferation in China. Among the top 50 most popular apps…33 offer lending services in two main categories – payday loans and consumer credit services”
- China: Huawei acquires Shenzhen payments firm, gaining payments license in likely move into mobile financial services
- PayPal to establish e-wallet services in China, focusing on cross-border payments in attempt to avoid direct competition with e-payments giants WeChat and AliPay
- China: Shenzhen Tengyin gains $15.3M led by Tencent with WeChat-based client acquisition and marketing solutions for retail banks
- Cryptocurrency: A round-up of crypto, digital currency and payments news headlines from the past month, touching on CBDCs, NFTs and more
- ICYMI: US Federal Reserve chairman states “…the risk that we keep our eyes on the most now is cyber risk”
- India: United Payments Interface hits $50M in value with 2.3BN in digital transactions
- India: M1xchange raises $10M in part from Amazon’s new $250M Smbhav Fund with MSME invoice discounting platform
- India: A look at ToneTag, enabling offline payments in areas with low internet connectivity using sound waves, backed by Amazon and Mastercard
- Japan: Minna Bank, digital banking arm of Fukuoka Financial Group, expected to launch in May, partnered with Accenture and running on Google cloud infrastructure
- Japan: A look at how some municipalities are embracing digital currency, launching community-focused digital money initiatives to boost local economy and identity
- Japan: Paidy buy-now-pay-later provider completes Series D, raising $120M with more than 5M consumer accounts and 7K company accounts
- Malaysia: Bank Negara Malaysia may assign up to 5 digital banking licenses by Q1 2022, favouring applications that focus on ‘unserved and underserved’ Malaysians
- Malaysia: 40% stake in Tranglo cross-border payments firm acquired by Ripple blockchain payments giant
- Philippines: A look at GInvest from GCash, digital investment platform allowing Filipinos to explore investing, direct from their mobile phone
- Philippines: Plentina ‘buy now, pay later’ startup raises $2.2M with instalment loans that can be used and repaid using e-wallets
- Philippines: An overview of Tonik, digital-only neobank in the 3-largest economy in SE Asia where 71% of the 72M adult population are unbanked
- Philippines: More on the Level Up program launched by Indonesia’s Xendit, accelerator focused on boosting digital payments for SMEs
- Download: Singapore Fintech Report 2021, from Fintech News Network (pdf)
- Singapore: Friz fintech raises 6-figure seed round from Y Combinator, 500 Durians and others with financial management platform for freelancers, run by ex-Mastercard exec
- Singapore: Regtank shortlisted as a finalist for FinTech Intel’s Asia FinTech Awards 2021 with one-stop solutions simplifying compliance around KYC and transactions
- ICYMI: Clubhouse launches creator payments system, partnering Stripe for processing, with 100% of donations going to creators
- ICYMI: Twitter may be exploring new option to allow users to donate to people for their tweets, direct from profiles, via Tip Jar or similar
- Vietnam: Fundiin buy-now-pay-later startup gains backing led by 1982 Ventures and Zone Startups Ventures, helping merchants offer customers monthly instalments
- Vietnam: Gimo fintech gains seed funding from ThinkZone Ventures, BK Fund and angel investors with focus on underbanked workers, providing early access to earned wages
- Vietnam: “Mobile Money on a trial basis will create a precedent for applying the sandbox mechanism to other services and new professions to appear in digital society.”
- Japan: Paidy BNPL firm launches Paidy Link mobile wallet integration feature, partnering with PayPal and allowing users to pay for purchases in monthly instalments
- Sri Lanka: DirectPay fintech solution takes Best Disruptor 2021 award at National Ingenuity Awards 2021 with home-grown digital payments services and ecosystem
- ICYMI: Visa begins settling transactions in USD Coin, US dollar-pegged cryptocurrency; users of partner service don’t need to first convert USDC tokens to US$
- Reserve Bank of India to invite license applications for New Umbrella Entity, under which companies would create and operate retail payment systems nationwide
- Indonesia: Pluang raises $20M with app-based investment and wealth management services, integrating with super-apps Bukalapak, Gojek and Dana
- Philippines: An intro to Peddlr, smart Point Of Sales app aiming to assist MSMEs by recording sales, logging expenses and giving better understanding of business performance
- India: A look at VernacularAI’s voice assistant VIVA, capable of understanding 16 languages and over 160 dialects, and currently being implemented in banks across rural India
- Bank of Thailand announces intention to develop a retail central bank digital currency, provisionally aiming for trials in Q2 2022
- Download: Central Bank Digital Currency – The Future of Payments for Corporates, from the Bank of Thailand’s Project Inthanon (pdf)
- India: “Digital payments could account for 71.7% of the total payments volume by 2025, leaving cash and cheques at 28.3%…”
- Download: Cryptocurrency – Looking Back on 2020 and 2021 Predictions, via @cryptocom (pdf)
- Download: Bloomberg Crypto Outlook, April 2021 Edition (pdf)
- South Korea: Klaytn blockchain firm partners with ConsenSys to work towards a Korean central bank digital currency, a digital won
- Digital Securities & Tokenization Summit set for May 19-20, a virtual conference focusing on the implementation of blockchain in traditional finance
- Download: PwC CBDC (Central Bank Digital Currency) Global Index, 1st edition (pdf)
- ICYMI: Tesla now accepts Bitcoin as payment option in the US, with company retaining Bitcoin rather than converting to USD
- Vietnam: Mobile Money likely to launch in Q2 2021, providing telco customers with cashless method to pay for small-value goods and services
- Australia’s Finder acquires Singapore’s GoBear brand and 7-country presence, aiming to grow Finder presence as a key financial comparison platform in SE Asia
- India’s Pine Labs merchant payments firm acquires Singapore’s Fave loyalty cashback startup for $45M, gaining QR-based offline payments with sights on SEA expansion
- ICYMI: Bank of Russia plans to unveil prototype for ‘digital ruble’ design in December, running on distributed ledger technology with central bank control
- Hong Kong: 4 e-payment providers chosen to operate city’s HK$36BN digital voucher scheme in bid to boost economic growth
- Indonesia: Bukalapak e-commerce giantis reportedly backed in $234M round led by Microsoft, with cloud, digital skills training and digital banking initiatives coming
- Non-fungible tokens: How do you regulate a non-conventional marketplace?
ASIA’S TECH NEWS, Daily
Startup News Asia app: All-day updates on tech, funding and startup news across Asia and Oceania.
Asia’s TECH NEWS ON SOCIAL MEDIA
You can get Startup News Asia’s ongoing updates on social media:
• Startup News Asia on Facebook
• Asia’s tech startup news on LinkedIn
You can alternatively get an overview of Asian technology news in a quarterly round-up for 17 locations across the region.
