What The FinTech #114 - 9 Oct 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 spent the entire week traveling
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What The FinTech Video & Podcast - Season 5 Episode 1
Last Wednesday, I was joined by Allen from iPYGG, for an enthralling interview about their financial technology solution, which helps next gen to gather all complicated financial information, bookkeep daily transactions and improve their financial easily.
Check out the previous videos?on?What The FinTech,?Instagram?or?Youtube.
The previous interviews are also available on podcast: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts.?
#WTF- Season 5 Episode 3 - Wednesday 12th Oct
On Wednesday, I'll be in an interesting interview with Miles Wen and Christy Ho from Fano Labs. Please join us and let me know if you have any questions.
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What was the FinTech this week in:???
HONG KONG
Crypto Exchange Huobi Global to be Acquired by About Capital
Crypto exchange Huobi Global, one of the biggest token trading outposts in the Asia markets, said late Friday that it has agreed to be purchased by Hong Kong-based investment company About Capital Management's M&A fund. In a blog post, Huobi Global, a top-10 exchange by trading volume, said About will “control the majority stake” of Huobi once the deal closes; it said the ownership transfer will have no impact on trading operations. The news comes after months of speculation and reports that founder Leon Li was seeking a buyer for his nearly 60% stake in Huobi, and was asking for at least $1 billion. The terms of the deal with About Capital were not disclosed.
Cathay launches advanced conversational AI powered by Fano Labs to enhance customers' digital experience
Cathay is enhancing its customers' digital experience with the launch of an advanced conversational artificial intelligence (AI) in partnership with Fano Labs, a Hong Kong-based language AI company. The new conversational AI developed in partnership with Fano Labs will improve the efficiency and productivity of the airline's AI chatbots, enabling them to provide more accurate responses to customers' queries. Such chatbot training is often time consuming and expensive, requiring human "AI Trainers" to look at historical data to see how customers interacted with the chatbot, manually extract, clean, and annotate useful portions of this historical data, and then feed it back into the chatbot for learning. To address these challenges, Cathay and Fano Labs have become [one of] the first in the market to have successfully developed and launched the Conversational AI Training Excellence platform that uses AI technologies to train AI chatbots. The "Trainer AI" leverages Fano Labs' Callinter product to analyse interactions with customers, including voice calls, live chats, WeChat messages, and WhatsApp messages, and automatically group these data into different categories for further processing, before presenting the results to a human supervisor for review and approval. The AI chatbot then learns from the data extracted by the trainer AI.
HK seeks suitable use case to sell public on retail CBDC
? The HKMA will launch a series of trials of its central bank digital currency (CBDC) in testing, the e-HKD, in the fourth quarter this year with banks and technology firms. The trials seek to determine the most suitable use case for the digital Hong Kong dollar. Electronic retail payments in Hong Kong are quite well established.
? HKMA updated the CBDC launching roadmap in September, showing that it plans to first launch a wholesale e-HKD platform for testing and exploring use cases before the final launch to the public.
? Allowing payments with smart devices like watches, easier cross-border payments, and balance between data privacy and control can be factors to support the Hong Kong retail CBDC.
SINGAPORE
Asian Bank DBS taps NASDAQ to up Its Market Surveillance Efforts
DBS, a Singapore-headquartered financial services group, has announced its plans to boost its surveillance and market integrity efforts by onboarding the trading surveillance technology of the American exchange, NASDAQ. The group in a statement noted that the technology will enable it to double down on its abilities to analyze comprehensive market abuse surveillance cases and patterns. Additionally, the solution will enable Southeast Asia's largest bank to detect trading anomalies across the equities, derivatives and over-the-counter forex markets. On top of that, DBS believes that the Software-as-a-Service solution will empower its analysts to optimize the time they spend detecting and responding to potential risks of market abuse. Onboarding the NASDAQ solution “will enable us to better protect our clients’ interests,” Songs added. The trade surveillance solution is used by more than 2,300 companies including banks, regulators and capital markets infrastructure operators.
HSBC invests in customer intelligence and risk assessment firm Bizbaz
HSBC Asset Management has led a $4 million seed funding round for Bizbaz, a Singapore-based startup using non-traditional data to help financial firms assess credit risk. More than seven out of 10 of South East Asia’s 680 million population is unbanked and therefore does not have credit data. However, mobile phone penetration rates in the region are 67%, enabling Bizbaz to tap into a trove of lifestyle and social, as well as financial, data to build up a risk profile of people. The firm says its technology helps financial services firms acquire and serve unbanked and underbanked people whilst also allowing them to reduce their costs.?
Revolut introduces an in-app educational feature for its Singapore users
Revolut, a global financial super app with more than 20 million customers worldwide, has launched an in-app educational module to help its Singaporean users learn more about the specific risks, nature and characteristics of cryptocurrencies. The new ‘Learn’ feature is said to provide education courses and warnings in language that is clear, concise and easily understandable. ‘Crypto Basics’ is the first of two courses and helps educate customers on what cryptocurrencies are compared to fiat money; the meaning of a ‘decentralised system’; cryptography; the mechanics of the blockchain technology; and the risks associated with crypto investments. The second course is based on the multichain network Polkadot, and how it unites blockchains into Web3 – the decentralised internet. Customers can receive a nominal reward by taking these short and simple courses and passing a quiz.?
Singapore Gears up for Next Phase of Growth for SGQR
Singapore has big plans for its national QR code payment standard. The country wants to establish its Singapore Quick Response Code (SGQR) as a top mobile payment method at physical stores, and is pursuing linkage opportunities with other national QR code payment schemes in Asia Pacific (APAC). Introduced in September 2018, SGQR is a standard for a unified payment QR code, allowing multiple payment schemes to be combined into a single SGQR label. In practice, this means that a merchant simply needs to display one QR payment code which would then be usable by the customer across a variety of digital wallets and payment apps. Ultimately, this means greater interoperability across mobile payment services, lesser fragmentation, and potentially, greater adoption of mobile and digital payments.?
领英推荐
Singapore's MAS opens ESG Impact Hub
The Monetary Authority of Singapore has launched an ESG Hub designed to spur collaboration between fintech startups, financial institutions and other stakeholders. The hub will focus on building Singapore's ESG ecosystem through supporting fintechs in the field; anchoring "enablers" such as investors, knowledge partners and financial institutions; and backing stakeholders to drive "material, quantifiable impacts". MAS says it already has 15 ESG fintechs and organisations set up at the hub as it builds up an onsite community that will ultimately boost financial sector access to high quality climate and sustainability data.?
MAS Works Closely With the Police to Combat Crypto Scams
The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has remained vigilant to combat rising cryptocurrency scams in the country, said Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Senior Minister and Minister in charge of MAS in a parliamentary reply. He added that MAS regularly conducts surveillance to identify unlicensed firms that illegally provide digital payment tokens (DPT) services or solicit customers in Singapore. Once identified, MAS will instruct these entities to stop offering services to Singapore residents and refer them to the Police for investigation.?
CHINA
Western Union supports international money transfers for Weixin users
Western Union has partnered Shanghai Pudong Development Bank and Tencent Financial Technology to enable international money transfers through Weixin. This new development will allow Weixin (WeChat) users in China to receive money in real-time through the Weihuikuan Mini Program, which is a lite app integrated with Weixin. Weixin serves approximately 1 billion users in China, while Western Union’s network reaches billions of bank accounts, including millions of wallets and cards in over 130 countries. This new development will allow Chinese Weixin users to receive Western Union money transfers in CNY equivalent of up to USD 3000 per transfer. Moreover, these users can deposit their funds in real time into their bank accounts by entering their Money Transfer Control Number (MTCN) and other relevant details in the Weihuikuan program.
Geopolitical tensions with the U.S. could ‘supercharge’ China’s innovation, JPMorgan says
U.S.-China tensions have pushed Beijing to be more self-sufficient, and that could be a good thing for innovators in China, according to an investment specialist at JPMorgan Asset Management. “One of the unintended consequences of this push and shove between the U.S. and China is that it has just underscored this determination in China to become self-sufficient in a whole variety of industries,” Alexander Treves told CNBC’s “Street Signs Asia” on Thursday.?
ASIA
India’s Wealth Market & Embracing FinTech and Digital Innovation in Wealth Management
Hubbis held its first live wealth management forum since 2019 in Mumbai on September 7 and the fourth panel discussion of the day focused on the evolution of digital innovation in the dynamic Indian wealth market. One of our expert speakers, Alok Saigal, President & Head Private Wealth of Edelweiss Private Wealth, responded to questions posed by Banesh Prabhu, Chief Executive Officer, Intellect SEEC - Insurance, Wealth & Capital Markets at Intellect Design Arena, and sponsor of the discussion. We have distilled some of the insights Alok offered delegates in this short report. Alok responded to comments from a fellow panellist around the importance of elevating the customer experience, scalability, digital agility, and other key elements, offering his own perspective.?
YES BANK executes first cross-border live transaction on the SLDE platform
YES BANK announced the execution of an industry-first cross-border live transaction under the digital mode in partnership with Secured Logistics Document Exchange (SLDE), a Government of India-aided blockchain-enabled platform. This move is in line with the Bank’s endeavour to develop an end-to-end digital trade ecosystem. The launch of the Beta version of SLDE was facilitated by the Government of India and the Ministry of Commerce & Industry with an aim to replace the physical exchange of trade documents with a digital enabled onboarding mechanism. This will reduce the time taken in delivery of physical documents and allows the buyer to initiate the process of goods release in a time-bound manner, thereby helping them to avoid any demurrage charges at the port.?
Grab eyes Malaysia and Indonesia next for digibank launch
Grab is launching its digibank in Malaysia and Indonesia next year. Earlier this year, GXS Bank, a joint venture between Grab and Singtel, and Kuok Brothers, was one of the five applicants which received a digital bank licence from Bank Negara Malaysia. The bank launched in Singapore last month and aims to revolutionise banking services for its customers by leveraging its technological capabilities and the power of the GXS, Grab and Singtel ecosystem. Grab expects to break even for its digibank operations by 2026, the company said during its first Investor Day recently.
BLOCKCHAIN - CRYPTO - DIGITAL ASSETS - DE FI
Polygon partners with Blockchain Founders Fund to Empower Web3 Entrepreneurs
Blockchain Founders Fund (BFF), a Singapore-based Venture Capital Fund that focuses on early-stage Web3 and blockchain startups globally, announces that Polygon, an Ethereum scaling platform onboarding millions to Web3, has made a strategic investment into their Fund II to diversify the company’s holdings and advance the mainstream adoption of blockchain technology. Blockchain Founders Fund boasts an impressive portfolio of over 100 companies in the Web3 space with an equally impressive track record of effectively scaling them to targeted audiences. These companies include blockchain-powered no-code gaming studios (GRID), social intelligence for cryptocurrencies (LunarCrush), and various other applications built on top of blockchain infrastructure. This latest partnership marks another successful collaboration between BFF and Polygon.
SWIFT Says It's Proved It Can Be the Way Forward for Global CBDCs
SWIFT, a key part of the conventional financial system that helps make cross-border payments between banks, has presented a framework for a global central bank digital currency (CBDC) system, claiming to have solved the challenge of interoperability between different networks. Following experiments involving the central banks of France and Germany as well as HSBC, NatWest, Standard Chartered, UBS and Wells Fargo, SWIFT said it has carried out transactions between different blockchain networks, using both CBDCs and fiat currencies. CBDCs aren't exactly cryptocurrencies like bitcoin (BTC), but they are cousins that share similar underpinnings: the distributed ledger system known as a blockchain that bitcoin pioneered. Central banks have for years toyed with the idea of digitizing fiat currencies like the U.S. dollar as CBDCs.?
Bitcoin’s Correlation With Gold Hits Highest Level in Over a Year
Bitcoin’s reduced tendency to move in tandem with U.S. stocks has refocused analysts on a correlation that’s suddenly strengthening: the cryptocurrency’s connection to gold. The two assets’ merging paths follow a recent trend, branching away from stock prices, which have sunk dramatically this year, and buttressing arguments by bitcoin evangelists that so-called digital gold offers the same safe-haven advantages as the real stuff. But the correlation remains only mildly strong, leaving open the question whether BTC and gold will continue to travel in sync. “We could be seeing a slight decoupling of crypto and equity markets, which is reflected in BTC's rising correlation with gold,” said Clara Medalie, head of research at crypto research group Kaiko.?
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