APAC FinTech Weekly Newsletter powered by Marcel van Oost

Hello FinTech Community!

Welcome back and lovely meeting you! I look forward to the insights and connections we’ll get by interacting here

?? Weekly Takeaway:

India’s government to donate $2m for digital financial inclusion in Africa

??What happened?

• $2m will be donated to the?Africa Digital Financial Inclusion Facility (ADFI)
• The purpose is to remove barriers for growth of digital financial solutions in Africa
• Why? Research shows that about 50% of Africa’s adult population hasn’t benefited from digital banking.
• Manisha Sinha, Additional Secretary in the Department of Economic Affairs and Principal ADFI Governing Council Member for India, said:

“India’s pioneering role in digital financial services, extending financial inclusion to remote rural areas and creating infrastructure for digitisation of financial services, opens a significant opportunity for India to work within the ADFI partnership to share learning and expertise on digital public infrastructure to further digital financial inclusion across the continent.”

?? Why is this relevant?

• You may be asking yourself, why is India donating to Africa? I asked myself the same question. And unfortunately the news doesn’t expand in great level of detail.
• However, what caught my attention was the gravity of the underserved population. To me if you don’t have access to digital banking that is definition of underserved. And having 50% of the continent’s population underserved is a massive challenge and opportunity. That is about 0.7 Billion people!
• And what’s even more important, many of these people are women, youth, farmers, small businesses and rural communities. This tells me there is still sooooo much to do! So yes, let’s get to work!

?? Read the full fintech.global article here.

Also, keep in mind the following:

?? Travel platform Klook adds telehealth to their travel Insurance

?? SCB and Thai Central Bank pilot a retail CBDC app

Exciting times,

Monica

Onwards to the news!

REPORT

Future of Asia Wealth Management: Re-imagining engagement by Accenture.

Why wealth management success in Asia requires step-change improvements in mobile- and human-channel design—with next-gen technology front and center.

Subscribe now

?? NEWS HIGHLIGHT

• Vijay Shekhar Sharma buys 10% stake in Paytm worth $628m from Antfin.

The off-market deal is to be completed through Sharma’s 100%-owned Netherlands-based entity, Resilient Asset Management, with the value of the acquired stake, which includes ownership and voting rights, estimated to be worth around $628 million.

Instead of being paid for in cash, Resilient will complete the acquisition by issuing Antfin with optionally convertible debentures (OCDs), a form of debt securities that enables Antfin to retain the economic value of the stake.

?? INFOGRAPHIC

• Accessing financial services in Pakistan is a headache. Especially for women.

According to Karandaaz’s latest Financial Inclusion Survey, 13% of Pakistani women have a financial institution account. While that’s an improvement from the previous edition back in 2017, the level is still below the lofty targets.

?? ARTICLE

• Wise publicizes their software engineering salary ranges on their website, for all regions they hire in.

The image comes from The Pragmatic Engineer article "What is a senior software engineer at Wise and Amazon?" by Gergely Orosz, which goes into more details on what's expected at the senior level at Wise.

• The story of how India's Unified Payments Interface emerged as the biggest digital payment platform and is solving a $100B remittance challenge:

How India's Unified Payments Interface emerged as the biggest digital payment platform, it's eyes on solving the $100B remittance challenge and India's potential as the Fintech hub of the future.

• Has Paytm found the secret sauce?

Paytm seems to have found the secret sauce at last. After years of rolling out seemingly unrelated digital financial services, the Indian fintech giant is instead focusing on lending and seeing its revenue rise accordingly.

• Top 5 Funded Fintech Companies in Hong Kong in 2023.

With an advantageous geographical location, robust financial sector, and an innovative, conducive regulatory environment, Hong Kong has become a vibrant epicenter of fintech activity.

• Why Tencent lags Alipay in cross-border payments.

Yet even as Tencent captured close to half of China’s payments market, and established a digital bank, WeBank, that could rival Ant Group’s MYbank, it never displayed the same kind of appetite for global expansion as Jack Ma’s company.

Let's take a look at Paytm's competition in various segments ??

?? INTERVIEW

• Thunes CEO, Peter De Caluwe, on transforming cross-border payments.

The Paypers interviewed Peter De Caluwe, the CEO of Thunes, on the company’s rapid growth and Series C funding announcement.

??INSIGHTS

• Meet the 20 most notable FinTech Startup investors in India in 2023:

At $27 Bn, the Indian Fintech sector was the second biggest recipient of VC funds between 2014 and June 2023 and accounted for 19% of the total $141 Bn raised by Indian startups during the period.

• New startup map showcases Thailand’s growing fintech startup ecosystem.

Despite being somewhat of a laggard compared with the likes of Indonesia and Singapore, Thailand’s fintech industry is developing well and featuring today some 107 startups, a new startup map released by the Fintech News Network shows.

• B2B Transactions Represent a US$ 22 Trillion Opportunity for Cross Border Payments.

Remittance transfer providers have embraced digitalization to help alleviate many of the pain-points of the industry and enhance the convenience, speed, security, and affordability of sending and receiving from abroad.

• India card payments market to surpass $728bn in 2027, forecasts GlobalData

India’s card payments market is expected to almost triple from INR21.7trn ($262.1bn) in 2022 to INR60.2trn ($728.2bn) in 2027, driven by rising consumer spending, says GlobalData, publishers of EPI.

NOW, ON TO THE SUMMARY OF LAST WEEK'S?NEWS

?? REGIONAL HIGHLIGHTS

?? 10X Banking set to expand footprint in APAC region.

?? Judo Bank impacted by HWL Ebsworth cyber attack.

?? Toss Bank in advanced talks to close $154M funding at a valuation of $2.1B.

?? Tookitaki releases Compliance-as-a-Service offering.

AUSTRALIA

Change Financial and Fintech Actuator join forces with Mastercard to create payments incubator for local fintech startups.

Airwallex has announced its partnership with OurCrowd. For the first time, institutions and individual accredited investors will have the ability to invest in startups anywhere – in their own local currency with a single click of a button.

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission is suing online investment platform eToro over an alleged failure to act honestly and fairly in the marketing of its contract for differences (CFD) product.

Caleb & Brown proudly announces the launch of its latest product, The Caleb & Brown Flagship Fund.

Australia’s competition regulator has blocked a USD 3.2 billion buyout planned by ANZ Group of insurer Suncorp’s banking arm.

EML Payments has gone to ground in the last four months as it scrambles to fix non-compliant anti-money laundering systems and a swathe of operational problems in Europe.

SINGAPORE

Finmo Tech has received a Major Payment Institution (MPI) license from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS).

Revolut has launched Instant Card Transfers in Singapore, providing secure, low-cost, and convenient remittances.

Tazapay has secured a Major Payment Institution (MPI) licence from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS).

Temasek pulls back on 2023 fintech investment amid challenging global outlook.

TerraPay approved for Major Payment Institution licence in Singapore.

SOUTH KOREA

Kakao Bank posts strong Q2 results. Kakao Bank is one of the few digital lenders that has reached profitability and stayed there, as it showed with its solid second-quarter earnings.

CHINA

Chinese users log $90b in transactions on Binance under domestic ban.

THAILAND

Siam Commercial Bank (SCB) and the Bank of Thailand (BOT) have developed an app as part of a retail Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) pilot project.

INDIA

Howden has revealed the appointment of Amit Agarwal as the Chief Executive Officer of Howden India.

Mastercard enables CVC-less payments for tokenised cards in India.

CRED has partnered with the NPCI to introduce RuPay credit card UPI payments and make transactions more convenient for its members.

VIETNAM

GoLogiq has agreed to acquire Symplefy. This strategic acquisition is designed to integrate and augment Symplefy’s extensive data generation with GoLogiq’s existing Radix? Big Data analytics platform.

Visa brings Apple Pay to Vietnamese cardholders. A safer, secure and private way to pay that helps them avoid handing their payment card to someone else.

PHILIPPINES

Adoption of fintech services via mobile apps will exceed 72% in the Philippines by the end of 2023.?