FinTech news headlines in June
Fintech news from June 2021 – news, articles & downloads
The June 2021 fintech news summary covers items including the growth of earned-wage-access startups in Asia, central bank digital currencies, Singapore’s e-payments licensing, Taiwan’s moves into cross-border remittances, app-based savings and investment services, Pakistan’s first digital bank and many more.
Click the headlines to read each fintech item from June 2021 in full, online and free of charge.
You’ll also find fintech news in our all-day tech updates
via mobile app and social media
- Download: Are Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) the money of tomorrow? From Deloitte (pdf)
- Download: Global Islamic Fintech Report 2021 (pdf)
- Available to download: ‘Emerging Challengers and Incumbent Operators Battle for Asia Pacific’s Digital Banking Opportunity’ from Boston Consulting Group
- ICYMI: US Republicans’ House campaign arm to accept contributions in cryptocurrency, processing donations using BitPay and immediately converting into dollars
- AWS Fintech Forum 2021 set for July 6th, running online, presented by Tech In Asia and Amazon Web Services
- ICYMI: Fintech Angel Operators network launches, focusing on Southeast Asia investments and drawing on senior execs in global fintech firms
- FinTech news, quarterly: A wide angle round-up of key fintech and banking technology news headlines, articles, reports and downloads from Q1 2021
- ICYMI: JPM Coin, JP Morgan’s digital token, looks at future “programming what money can do for you, whether it’s conditional payments, whether it’s things like tax assessments.”
- South Korea: “The race to develop AI bankers is heating up in Korea, especially after the pandemic brought about the closure of hundreds of offline stores nationwide.”
- Stripe payments giant launches Stripe Identity, artificial intelligence and ML tech ID tool intended to securely verify identities of users from more than 30 countries
- “The digital currency revolution is here, and may sweep away 5,000 years of monetary history. There is a coming storm in the world of finance as governments around the world engage in a global contest to digitize their currencies.”
- Q1 2021: Cryptocurrency, CBDC and digital currency news headline summary for January, February and March of this year
- Download: ‘The future of digital currencies’, a February 2021 9-page outline from Standard Chartered (pdf)
- Hong Kong Monetary Authority launches Fintech 2025 Strategy, featuring focus on CBDCs and cross-border payments
- India: FamPay raises $38M Series A with goal of building the country’s first neobank for teenagers, with digital payments card without the need for a bank account
- India: UK’s Tide fintech to enter Indian market with $138M investment plan, expecting to create over 1K jobs in 5 years, providing banking services for SMEs
- Indonesia: goKampus raises pre-Series A, aiming to provide all-in-one app-based college services, spanning enrolments, virtual courses, scholarships, internships, loans and more
- Indonesia: Amartha peer-to-peer lending startup raises $7.5M, connecting investors funding with women micro-entrepreneurs in rural areas as business capital loans
- Indonesia: Wagely raises $5.6M with earned wage access focus on Indonesia’s 100M Indonesian low- and middle-income workers
- A brief look at LINE BK, digital bank from Japan’s LINE messenger app LINE, initially launched in Thailand and now expanding its user base in Taiwan
- Japan: A look at Softbank-backed digital payments firm PayPay, boasting 3M merchants and over 39M users
- Malaysia: Sunway conglomerate to apply for online-only banking licence, aiming to move into fintech sector with focus on individuals and MSMEs
- Philippines: Uno digital bank gains license from country’s central bank, enabling AI-run features including facial recognition and voice ID
- Philippines: Netbank launches following regulatory approval, providing banking-as-a-service operations for companies entering or transitioning to digital financial services
- Philippines: Voyager Innovations raises $167M, aiming to grow PayMaya fintech’s mobile wallet, payments processing and digital remittance businesses
- Singapore: A look at SourceSage fintech, streamlining invoice management and payments processes developed with Visa via the IMDA Open Innovation Platform
- Singapore: Over 300 firms apply for Monetary Authority of Singapore payments and crypto exchange licences, including Alibaba and Google
- Sri Lanka: PayMedia fintech startup secures LKR 85M loan from NDB in part due to funding access provided by new, startup-friendly credit scoring framework
- Taiwan: Act Governing Electronic Payment Institutions amendments set to come into effect in July, formalising opportunities in cross-border remittances
- Vietnam: Mfast fintech startup raises $1.5M Pre-Series A with financial institution partnerships that provide services like loans and insurance to a primarily rural customer base
- Vietnam: Infina raises $2M with app-based savings and investments services, providing alternatives to investing in long-term asset classes like real estate
- Australia: Zeller, fintech startup from former Visa and Square execs, raises additional Au$50M pre-launch funding, looking to take on Australia’s major banks
- Hong Kong: An intro to PopSand Robotics and their education-focused robot aimed at helping children learn English through conversation
- ICYMI: Telkom comms major launches Africa’s first Mastercard virtual card for transacting using WhatsApp, enabling e-commerce and payments locally and internationally
- India: Refyne raises $16M Series A with plug-and-play earned wage access software, providing employers with method enabling employees to access real-time salary
- South Korea: Seoul Fintech Lab partners F10 to bring fintech and insurance-tech accelerator program to South Korea
- ICYMI: TAG Innovation to become Pakistan’s first digital bank in country where 70% of adults – near 100 million people – don’t have a bank account
- “There’s a new vision for crypto, and it’s wildly different from Bitcoin”
- Singapore’s BondEvalue bond exchange gains $6M led by Citi bank with blockchain-based bond market ‘electronification’
- China: Past digital yuan project head talks of CBDCs in future working on Ethereum smart contract basis rather than as digital cash, executing functions when set conditions are met
- China: Will digitization change the status of the yuan at home and abroad?
- Hong Kong: Amber Group cryptocurrency trading firm raises $100M Series B, ten times the company’s 2019 Series A, offering algorithmic trading and more
- Indonesia: Cryptocurrency transaction volume grew by nearly 470% from $4.4BN last year to $25BN in the first 5 months of 2021
- ICYMI: Snickerdoodle Labs raises $2.3M with data privacy-focused NFTs, aiming for NFTs to be ‘the cookies of the Web 3.0 ecosystem’
- ICYMI: Square payments provider considering developing hardware cryptocurrency wallet, essentially open-source and not tied to Square ecosystem
- India: Mastercard takes equity stake in Instamojo online selling platform with sights on the country’s MSMEs and gig workers, and e-commerce market
- Everything You Need To Know About What Amazon Is Doing In Financial Services, via CB Insights
- Australia: Zeller, fintech startup from former Visa and Square execs, raises additional Au$50M pre-launch funding, looking to take on Australia’s major banks
- Video: Play-To-Earn, NFT Gaming in the Philippines – how a community earns real-world money by playing token-rewards games like Axie Infinity
- Australia: A brief round-up of recent tech startup funding news, touching on SME finance, insurance tech, proptech and more, from Smart Company
- The digital currencies that matter’: Get ready for Fedcoin and the e-euro – via The Economist
- South Korea: Residents to be required to pay tax on crypto assets held in overseas exchanges, starting January 2022
- El Salvador president announces plan to make Bitcoin legal tender alongside US Dollar, subject to approval of legislation by El Salvador congress
- South Korea: Over $47M in bitcoin, ethereum and other crypto assets were confiscated from 12K people accused of tax evasion following months-long probe
- Bank of France completes CBDC settlement experiment, testing CBDC issuance and settlements on a public blockchain via a smart contract simulation
- Download: Bloomberg Crypto Outlook, June 2021 Edition (pdf)
- Philippines: Japan’s Marubeni trading house to take stake in e-money platform JV for seafarers between NYK Line shipping firm and Filipino TDG conglomerate
- Philippines: 10 financial literacy projects gain grants and support from PhilDev Foundation and Cebuana Lhuillier Foundation, focusing on the underserved
- ICYMI: Andreessen Horowitz venture capital giant – a16z – raises $2.2BN for Crypto Fund III, making it the VC industry’s largest cryptocurrency-focused investment fund
- “Unlike cryptocurrencies…central bank digital currencies would be issued, backed and controlled by domestic national banks [allowing]…governments to monitor every transaction…”
- China, global trade & CBDC: “The only question is how far-reaching the ramifications will be across issues related to who controls access to capital and its movements.”
- ICYMI: Telkom comms major launches Africa’s first Mastercard virtual card for transacting using WhatsApp, enabling e-commerce and payments locally and internationally
- Sri Lanka: National Development Bank selects Axion to deploy OneConnect artificial intelligence-driven video know-your-customer tech
- Thailand: Securities and Exchange Commission bans digital asset exchanges from trading meme- or fan-based tokens, NFTs and exchange-issued tokens
- Australia: Lloyds Auctions Australia begins accepting cryptocurrency for all purchases on its marketplace
ASIA’S TECH NEWS Daily
Startup News Asia mobile app – boosting the signal on Asia’s tech news, daily – get the app on Google Play:
ASIA’S startup NEWS today, ON SOCIAL MEDIA
You can alternatively get our all-day tech news on social media:
• Asia’s tech news daily on Twitter
• Asia’s tech news today, on Facebook
• Asia’s startup news via LinkedIn
And connect with our founder on LinkedIn to expand your professional networks:
