Daily Fintech Crunch: 27/04/2022

Dear All

Greetings and welcome to today’s Fintech Crunch. Let’s get right into it as there is a lot to cover today.

? Fintech:

• NPCI International Payments Ltd (NIPL) has entered the UAE market by partnering with NeoPay, the payment subsidiary of Mashreq Bank, and will offer Unified Payments Interface-based payments for Indians.

• Funding Societies, a Southeast Asian SME digital financing platform also known as Modalku in Indonesia, announced its investment into Indonesia’s Bank Index alongside Carro, a Southeast Asian automotive marketplace platform.

• Auto-tech company CarDekho has introduced Rupyy, a specialized fintech platform to offer financing options to automobile customers and retailers.

• Global payments platform Nium announced a definitive agreement to acquire Socash, a Singapore-based alternative payments network platform.

• SEPAexpress, which provides white-labeled account-to-account (A2A) payments for Payments Service Providers (PSPs), merchants, and corporates in Europe has been acquired by Banking Circle Group.

• Airwallex, a payment platform startup, is looking to raise as much as $150 million in an extension of its series E funding round, according to people familiar with the matter.

• Payd, a Malaysian earned wage access solution provider, announced that it has raised $1.7 million in a seed funding round led by IFS Capital.

• Australian personal loans company OurMoneyMarket has increased its warehouse funding to as much as $435 million, thanks to a capital injection from Dutch bigwig ING.

• Bite appoints Tom Hamilton as its new Chief Information Officer in charge of management, implementation, and usability of technology.

• FIS, a publicly-traded $62 billion fintech company offering everything from payments services to wealth management, has joined up with New York-based infrastructure company Fireblocks to provide its more than 6,000 capital markets clients access to a full suite of crypto trading and lending services.

• Alif, a FinTech based in Tajikistan, is looking at getting more into the Pakistan Fintech space to further Fintech's reach to unbanked customers in the market.

• Zenda, a UAE-based fintech company that offers BNPL for parents to pay school fees, uses its newly acquired funds to accelerate expansion into India while eyeing markets in North Africa like Egypt.

• HWGC Holdings announced that it will acquire two financial technology companies, furthering the company’s blockchain ambitions in the FinTech industry.

• Manulife Singapore and DBS Bank announced the launch of their co-developed insurance starter plan, ProtectFirst, designed to help young Singaporeans kickstart their protection journey affordably at a lower premium.

• UK "Winning with Fintech" campaign calls for businesses to promote the UK's Fintech sector and embrace the ￡32bn revenue opportunity it presents.

• San Francisco-based Fintech start-up Multicent is gearing up for launch, aiming to provide a financial services super-app offering personal and business accounts and a range of financial products for people and traders across 15 countries.

• Dublin-based Fenergo, a provider of digital solutions for Know your Customer (KYC) and client lifecycle management (CLM), announced on Monday that it has acquired Amsterdam’s Sentinels with an undisclosed value, an anti-money laundering (AML) transaction monitoring new market entrant with AI-based technology.

• WeLab Bank, the virtual bank dedicated to curating intelligent banking experience, has become the first virtual bank in Hong Kong licensed to offer digital wealth advisory services.

• Taiwan’s Cathay United Bank has gone live with Avaloq’s core banking solution.

?? Crypto & DeFi:

• More than 40 crypto business leaders have asked the European Union not to require crypto firms to disclose transaction details and dial down attempts to bring to heel rapidly growing decentralized finance platforms.

• Nexo, a leading regulated institution for digital assets, is partnering with Mastercard to launch the world’s first crypto-backed payment card that will allow users to spend without selling their digital assets.

• Following the adoption of the new cryptocurrency tax law, the volume of trading on major Indian cryptocurrency exchanges has decreased.

• The Central African Republic (CAR) is said to be adopting Bitcoin (BTC) with a new law that would reportedly allow citizens to pay their taxes in crypto and allow the use of crypto as a form of payment for businesses.

• COIN stock has been on a continuous downward trajectory since the beginning of 2022 and has corrected more than 60% from its all-time highs.

?? Metaverse & NFTs:

• Meta Platforms Inc (FB.O) is set to open its first physical store where shoppers can try out and buy virtual reality headsets and other gadgets as the company plots a course to take its highly touted metaverse mainstream.

• The celebrity influencer tech platform CampNova has announced its latest launch — a sci-fi and fantasy-inspired NFT collection with over 13,000 NFTs. The concept of this collection revolves around love and violence in a world ruled by “Doggs.”

• US-based and Nasdaq-listed crypto exchange Coinbase announces the launch of Web3 NFT marketplace.

• Metaverse has been branded an 'online Wild West' by child safety campaigners after Channel 4's Dispatches uncovered evidence of sexual abuse and racism in the virtual reality world.

?? Other News:

• Twitter is taking Musk’s offer, and is being sold for $44 billion.

• Egypt-based cloud kitchen operator The Food Lab raised $4.5 million in a pre-seed round, co-led by Nuwa Capital, Shorooq Partners and 4DX Ventures.

• KSA-based gaming platform Spoilz Games has closed a pre-seed investment round of $692,000 from angel investors.

• Pakistan-based B2B procurement platform Zaraye raises $2.1 million pre-seed to help manufacturing businesses procure raw materials and finance the working capital.

• Egypt-based edtech Sprints has raised $1.2 million in a Seed funding round led by the Alexandria Angels Network as well as members of MED Angels and AUC Angels, Cubit Ventures, Challenge Fund, EdVentures, Falak Startups, and Cairo Angels.

• Right Farm, a B2B AgTech digital platform, raised $2.8 million, in a Seed funding round led by

?? Report of the Day:

• The global financial system is rapidly being transformed by digitalization. The financial sectors of economies in the EBRD areas are no exception, with such digital transformation having a significant impact. Additional obstacles exist in such regions when compared to wealthy countries, such as low levels of financial literacy, limited technological ecosystems, and insufficient digital infrastructure. Read the full report here.

• The Fintech markets in the APAC and Americas regions are currently the largest, with both having around 40% of the global market share. The EMEA region is significantly smaller, with around 20% of the total market share. The Fintech market in the APAC region is projected to be the fastest-growing. Read the full report here.

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Until tomorrow, goodbye and good night.

–Arjun Vir Singh