October 2021 FinTech news headlines
Headlines from the broad fintech and banking technology field in October 2021 covered a wide range of developments and issues including: the US City of Miami’s moves to embrace Bitcoin; Moscow Metro’s FacePay system; Fintech Australia’s Regulatory Map: the growth of BNPL systems across Asia; and many more.
Crypto and digital currency news is also featured in Startup news Asia’s daily technology news feeds, delivered across social media, by email newsletter and by mobile app.
- The buy-now-pay-later market: “…the big three – Klarna, Affirm and Afterpay – have a combined market capitalisation of about $100BN, almost the same as Goldman Sachs.”
- Standard Chartered invests $500M in Singapore’s digital lending unicorn Atome Financial as part of 10-year multi-product partnership to roll out BNPL services across Asia
- Asia’s tech news, issue 093: HK fintech, Singapore VC, Vietnam e-commerce, blockchain gaming, Apple & surveillance…
- Asia’s tech news, issue 094: Taiwan’s startups, VR & healthcare, blockchain in China, Indian fintech…
- ICYMI: Mastercard partners Bakkt to allow all banks and merchants to offer cryptocurrency and related services including wallets, crypto rewards and more
- ICYMI: Visa looking at creating universal payment channel for global transfers of digital currencies, connecting different blockchains to manage stablecoin and CBDC transfers
- Pakistan’s QisstPay follows recent $15M funding with plans to expand buy-now-pay-later services to Bangladesh and Sri Lanka inside 6 months
- ICYMI: US city of Miami has so far generated over $8M from issuing local-use MiamiCoin cryptocurrency
- Indonesia: Ajaib, investment app similar to Robinhood hits unicorn status after raising $153M Series B, allowing users to buy and sell company shares and mutual funds
- Malaysia: MyFintech Week 2022 set for January 24-28, running virtually – pre-registrations now open
- Australia: Former consumer neo bank, Archa, to launch smart business credit card and spend management platform that integrates with a firm’s accounting software
- Online event: ‘Japan’s Potential As An International Financial Hub’, part of the Nikkei Virtual Global Forum series
- ICYMI: Visa to launch Universal Payments Channel, platform enabling central bank digital currencies to transfer between blockchains, and also allowing stablecoins to operate on different blockchains
- ICYMI: Moscow Metro launches Face Pay at 240 stations, cashless, cardless and phoneless payments based on facial recognition, raising privacy and surveillance worries
- Hong Kong: Bloom lands collaboration with Visa to boost cash-back app featuring city-wide deals, rewards and brands exposure
- India: MarketWolf trading app raises $5.5M with focus on intraday options, trades confined to the same, single market day
- Stablecoins: What are they for – and how stable are they?
- India: Stripe payments giant makes first India acqusition with Recko payments reconciliation platform
- China: Tencent Cloud forms strategic partnership with Yusys Technologies fintech software firm to deliver cloud solutions to major banks in move to compete with Alibaba Cloud
- ICYMI: ‘FinTech in Singapore 1H 2021’, a brief overview from UOB, United Overseas Bank
- Fintech Australia launches Australian Fintech Regulatory Map to help with navigating the country’s legal and regulatory requirements system
- EY FinTech Australia Census 2021: “…Where fintechs are three years or older, 88% are post-revenue. Following in their wake, 81% of companies two years or older are also post-revenue.”
- Australia: Commonwealth Bank to replace Android-based POS terminals with Smart platform in Verifone partnership, providing app marketplace and host of built-in features
- ICYMI: Greater financial instability, fraud and funding of terrorism likely unless governments toughen supervision of cryptocurrencies, says International Monetary Fund
- Singapore’s United Overseas Bank to spend up to $500M on new personalised digital banking app, aiming to double digital customers to over 7M across ASEAN by 2026
- Asia’s tech news, latest issue: Korea’s vertical farms, Australian agri-tech, Indonesian investing app, Huobi in China, NFTCon…
- ICYMI: “Central & Southern Asia and Oceania is the 4th largest crypto market…$572.5BN in value between July 2020 and June 2021, 14% of global transactions…”
- Tech News Asia, latest issue: Adtech in China, Malaysia’s MyFintech Week, India’s women leaders, Australian drone deliveries…
- ICYMI: Hong Kong Monetary Authority publishes technical whitepaper on possible retail central bank digital currency, an ‘e-HKD’
- Australian Fintech Landscape 2021 now available to download from KPMG, a one-page snapshot of the companies in the sector
- Asia’s tech news, issue 099: Wozniak at TechSparks, Singapore SPACs, India’s Google-phone, China’s banking clouds, drones in Malaysia…
- Vietnam: South Korea’s LOTTE Card launches buy-now-pay-later service
- 93% of all Singaporeans had heard of crypto and 43% owned it, with adoption highest among 26-45 year-olds. 66% of respondents in that group said they owned some crypto’
- MP in Kingdom of Tonga, Polynesia, to propose accepting Bitcoin as legal tender to improve remittances for disapora communities
- New Zealand: Easy Crypto raises $17M, setting sights on overseas markets including Indonesia, the Philippines and other parts of Asia
- “…stablecoins, which act as a bridge between national currencies and the cryptocurrency market, should be regulated as financial market infrastructure alongside payment systems and clearing houses…”
- ICYMI: US City of Miami plans advance to allow city employees to be paid using Bitcoin, and to let residents pay fees and potentially taxes using the cryptocurrency
- Technology Council of Australia launches ‘Roadmap to Deliver One Million Tech Jobs’ focusing on 4 key steps to be taken
- Fintech in Vietnam online launch event set for October 27th, focusing on how Australian companies can be part of the emerging fintech sector in the country
- Australia: Startmate accelerator launches Engineering Fellowship, connecting experienced engineers with networks within the Startmate community of ANZ startups, investors and partners
- Download: ‘Inthanon-LionRock to mBridge – Building a multi CBDC platform for international payments’, interim findings of Multiple Central Bank Digital Currency Bridge project (pdf)
- “India’s cryptocurrency market expanded 641% in the past year, driving growth of digital currencies in central and Southern Asia…”
- ICYMI: UK’s Action Fraud centre for fraud and cyber crime finds £146M lost to crypto fraud since the start of 2021, near 30% more than reported lost in entirety of 2020
- South Korea: Kakao Pay, country’s largest online payment service, raises massive $1.3BN in IPO
- Tokenized music royalties: “Of the $40BN in annual revenue earned by the music industry, only 12% is actually paid out to artists..”
- An overview of how Ethereum may be set to become “…the platform of choice for…Web 3.0, where a series of decentralised apps could one day challenge Big Tech’s offerings…”
- India: Chingari short-video platform to launch its own crypto token, aiming for the $GARI token to be tradeable on cryptocurrency exchanges
- China: Huawei shifts focus to mobile payments, with Huawei Pay app seen as opportunity to become competitive against giants Alipay and WeChat Pay
Our OTHER news EDITIONS
Our other editions provide different ways to keep up to date with startups, technology and related developments across Asia and the Indo-Pacific – and don’t forget our mobile app.
