What The FinTech #101 - 19 Jun 2022
Medhy Souidi
?? AI, FinTech & Digital Banking Strategist | Gen AI, Payments & Web3 Innovation | Ecosystem & Partnerships Leader | ??? Industry Speaker & Podcast Host
Happy Sunday & Welcome back to?What The FinTech,?your regular FinTech & Innovation?Newsletter?focusing on Hong Kong & Asia!
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What?you?would?have?missed?if?you?had?stayed?under?your?umbrella?for?the?entire?week!
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Substack Newsletter
You can now find this newsletter on?substack?- click on subscribe to follow it.
What The FinTech Episode 4
I interviewed?Percy Hung?and?Brian Tsang, the co-founders of?Choco?Up.?Choco Up is a global technology and financial services platform, offering revenue-based financing and business growth solutions for digital merchants and startups.?With data analytics and machine learning at its core, Choco Up employs vast integrations to automate fund deployment, providing fast-growing companies with zero-equity funding in a quick and seamless manner.
To learn more about RBF, listen to this episode.
The previous interviews, and the next one, are available on podcast: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts.
What The FinTech Episode 5
Check out the previous videos here:?on?What The FinTech,?Instagram?or?Youtube.
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What was the FinTech this week in:???
HONG KONG
Hong Kong video gaming and metaverse unicorn Animoca Brands is expanding into blockchain-based educational products with its acquisition of TinyTap, a platform that allows users to create their own games, in a bid to transform content creation and ownership in the business segment. In a US$38.9 million deal, Animoca is taking an 84.13 percent stake in TinyTap, which operates a platform for educators and parents to create their own video games without any coding experience. Animoca said it will leverage its new acquisition to establish a platform for blockchain-based educational user-generated content (UGC).?
Meta will use Hong Kong as a testing ground to roll out several metaverse initiatives as it brings virtual experiences to the city’s 7.4 million residents. Meta on Tuesday said that it will work with local partners such as cafe chains, schools and art institutions to provide “first-hand” metaverse experiences in the city and explore potential use of the metaverse in daily life. This will include virtual reality (VR) exhibitions at local cafes and open augmented reality (AR) training workshops for educators and secondary school students. It will also work with local creators in Hong Kong and share their non-fungible token projects on Instagram.?
Samsung Asset Management has launched a blockchain-focused exchange-traded fund, the first of its kind in Hong Kong, which will track companies involved in the field including cryptocurrencies. The company has raised US$12 million from institutional investors for its Samsung Blockchain Technologies ETF, which will trade under the stock code “3171” from June 23. The ETF will seek to invest in up to 60 companies and will debut on the Hong Kong stock exchange at a listing price of US$2. It will, however, be traded in Hong Kong dollars in lots of 50 units. This blockchain-focused fund will be Samsung Asset Management (HK)’s sixth ETF in Hong Kong.?
Deel, a US unicorn that helps companies hire and pay remote contractors and employees in more than 150 markets globally, is launching in Hong Kong. Founded in 2019, the San Francisco-headquartered start-up provides a “tech-enabled self-service” platform that speeds up the employer of record service that certain companies have been providing over the past decade. Employers of record are firms that help businesses hire employees in countries where the employer does not have a local entity. As the legal employer, the employer of record ensures that employees are hired in compliance with local regulations and handles their payroll.
SINGAPORE
Singapore-based TripleA that as awarded a digital payment token licence from the Monetary Authority of Singapore, which allows it to provide end-to-end cryptocurrency payment services for businesses in full compliance with global regulatory standards has raised US$4 million in its first funding round, led by Razer’s corporate venture arm zVentures. Razer noted that crypto payments is an area of interest and relevance to Razer in the gaming space. The funding also followed with a recent announcement of TripleA being selected by Binance as its global cryptocurrency gateway.?
The Association of Banks in Singapore (ABS) has chosen MonetaGo to build a new network for registering trade finance transactions. Slated to go live in the fourth quarter, the Trade Finance Registry (TFR) will be an interoperable industry utility that bridges information silos between banks to combat duplicate financing fraud. It will serve as a secure database for records of trade transactions financed across foreign and local banking institutions in Singapore, as well as connect to trusted sources of information for validation checks on trade data. Singapore's banks hope that the new system will mitigate the risk of duplicate financing by different lenders for the same trade transaction, and the falsification of information supplied by borrowers.
CHINA
领英推荐
China’s digital yuan, also called the e-CNY, is the world’s first truly large-scale central bank digital currency. The reported number of e-CNY users — 261 million — is more than the combined populations of Germany, France, Italy and Spain. The financial sector, both in China and abroad, is interested in how quickly consumers in a large economy will adopt a central bank digital currency, or CBDC. Digital legal tender may pose a risk of disintermediation of the financial system or increased instability in the event of bank runs. If the world’s largest banking system can roll out a CBDC without falling prey to these risks, it will be an instructive example. For their part, other countries’ governments — 79 of which are in the process of researching, developing or deploying their own CBDCs — are observing the e-CNY pilot to see how quickly government-sponsored digital money might replace both cash and private forms of digital money. There is also much discussion taking place in policy circles over e-CNY adoption as a future challenge to U.S. dollar dominance as the e-CNY participates in pilot programs for cross-border transactions. 19% of Chinese respondents said they had downloaded the e-CNY app, in line with the official number. The e-CNY has a tough road ahead. Private digital payment apps WeChat Pay and Alipay are ubiquitous in China, together accounting for around 94% of the digital payments marketplace.
The cloud business unit of Chinese marketplace giant Alibaba Group Holdings launched a new nonfungible token (NFT) solution and then promptly deleted all mention of it online. The firm’s NFT marketplace solution included “web hosting, digital marketing & content delivery” infrastructure but is no longer listed on its website. Meanwhile, the solution’s webpage link still shows up in Google search results and now redirects to Alibaba Cloud’s solution index page. The shortly lived NFT-focused solution was set to offer Alibaba Cloud Elastic Compute Service (ECS) and Auto Scaling for marketplace growth, an SMS-integrated digital marketing service for sellers to connect with buyers, and a Global Delivery Service, Alibaba Cloud Content Delivery Network (CDN) and Server Load Balancer (SLB) capable of supporting 100,000 queries per second.
ASIA
The Reserve Bank of India has lifted a ban on Mastercard onboarding new card customers in the country. Last July, the RBI told Mastercard to stop onboarding all new credit, debit and prepaid card customers, accusing the firm of violating data storage rules. Under data storage rules from 2018, all payment system providers were given six months to ensure that full end-to-end transaction details were stored in systems only in India. The rule change was designed to "ensure better monitoring" of data. Mastercard - along with Visa, American Express, PayPal, Amazon and the US government - lobbied against the rule when it was first introduced.?
London based digital banking platform Revolut has expanded to five countries with the aim of reaching 90 by year end. Revolut has launched a simplified version that will be available to users in five new markets: Sri Lanka, Chile, Ecuador, Azerbaijan, and Oman. Customers in new markets will be able to transfer money to more than 50 countries. Transfers between Revolut accounts will be made free of charge, and those to other bank accounts will be commissioned at 1% (minimum USD 1) for customers in new markets. Any transfer fee is displayed directly in the app so that the user can see the associated costs and exchange rate for international transfers.?
Mastercard is expanding its Start Path startup programme with the introduction of a scheme focused on open banking. The payments giant has picked the UAE's Dapi, Indonesia's Finantier, the UK's mmob, Nigeria's Mono, and American outfit Paywallet to join the three-month programme. Participants will get access to Mastercard's expertise and insights, interacting with the company's open banking subsidiaries Finicity and Aiia. They will also get access to Mastercard’s ecosystem of banks, merchants, partners and digital players across the globe.?
Indonesian payments platform Flip has raised $55 million in a Series B extension round led by Tencent, with participation from Block. Founded by three University of Indonesia alumni while still studying, Flip offers P2P payments with interbank transfers to more than 100 domestic banks, international remittances, e-wallet top-ups, and business solution products. Flip focuses on helping Indonesians, both individual and businesses to execute various money transaction at low cost through their platforms.?
Shopee, the e-commerce arm of New York-listed Sea, is pulling out of Spain and retrenching staff in South-east Asia and South America. The exit from Spain comes less than a year after it launched in the country. It is also Shopee’s third departure from an international market. This comes shortly after the company reportedly announced global layoffs primarily affecting ShopeePay and ShopeeFood, its digital wallet and food delivery businesses. Layoffs at Shopee will impact the ShopeeFood and ShopeePay teams in South-east Asia, the teams at Shopee Mexico, Argentina and Chile, and the cross-border team supporting Spain. It is not clear whether staff at its global headquarters Singapore will be affected. Other than Singapore, Shopee also has operations in Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines.?
BLOCKCHAIN - CRYPTO - DIGITAL ASSETS - DE FI
Crypto exchange Huobi Global launched Ivy Blocks, a DeFi and web3 blockchain ecosystem investment arm. Ivy Blocks will invest in promising blockchain projects to help unlock their growth potential. Ivy Blocks will take advantage of crypto opportunities in global markets. The new investment arm has more than $1 billion in crypto assets under management to deploy. One of the first projects to be supported by Ivy Blocks is Capricorn Finance, an AMM-based decentralized exchange built on Cube.
Major US cryptocurrency lending company Celsius Network on Monday (Jun 13) froze withdrawals because of “extreme market conditions”, in the latest sign of pressure on the sector from tumbling crypto markets. Celsius Network, a significant player in crypto lending, offers interest-bearing products to customers who deposit their cryptocurrencies with the company, and lends out crypto currencies to earn a return. It said it had frozen withdrawals, as well as transfers between accounts, “to stabilise liquidity and operations while we take steps to preserve and protect assets”. The company also said, “We are taking this action today to put Celsius in a better position to honour, over time, its withdrawal obligations.”. As of May 17, Celsius Network had US$11.8 billion in assets, and had processed a total of US$8.2 billion worth of loans.?
Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by volume, will now become the first to offer ride-hailing on its platform. Users can book ride-hailing services and experiences, then pay in their favored cryptocurrency. Without having to download multiple apps, or remember several usernames and passwords, users of the super-app can seamlessly access and complete the transaction with Binance Pay. Splyt will provide Binance’s 90 million users with its network of mobility partners in 150 countries around the world. Its on-demand services, such as offers for over 300,000 trips, tickets, and things to do, also include global customer-support, through the support of local language conversion. This service is already available to billions of global smartphone users through other leading super apps, such as Alipay, Grab, and Booking.com.
Coinme, a cryptocurrency cash exchange in the U.S., and Circle, a global internet finance firm and the issuer of USD Coin (USDC), recently announced at Consensus 2022 a strategic collaboration “to integrate USDC into Coinme’s global cash onramp and offramp ecosystem.” The integration “promotes financial inclusion by enabling borderless digital cash to be accessible across thousands of locations worldwide, making it simple and affordable to cash in, cash out and send USDC.” The ability to cash in and out of USDC will be “available at thousands of Coinme-enabled locations in the U.S. and, soon, throughout Latin America.” This integration will “offer 79 million Americans and 70% of Latin Americans who are unbanked or underbanked a new option to access a vital pathway into digital finance and financial inclusion.”
Australia-based global payments giant – Novatti Group – has joined hands with blockchain startup Ripple to build a new AUD-pegged stablecoin (AUDC). The company plans to launch it on the XRP Ledger. As of date, more than 300 global financial institutions are using Ripple’s instant cross-border payments network. The Novatti Group has been Ripple’s customer for the past few years. AUDC is the latest development in the company’s suite of digital products and shall be integrated into Novatti’s international payments network. The AUDC shall be pegged 1:1 against the Australian Dollars. Individuals and institutions can leverage the AUDC use to send money instantly anywhere across the world using the power of blockchain technology. This will also help them save majorly in transaction fees.
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I hope you find the information provided in this?newsletter?to be informative and helpful.?
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