Author: Fintech News Singapore

For the second consecutive year, Vietnamese consumers are being recognized as the biggest adopters of cryptocurrencies, recording the highest usage of crypto-related tools, products and services, compared to other nations. This is the finding of Chainalysis’ 2022 Global Crypto Adoption Index, an annual study which analyzes transactional data from 140+ countries to determine which nations are the biggest users of crypto. This year again, emerging markets are dominating the index, with Vietnam taking the lead, followed by the Philippines. High adoption in emerging markets can be in part explained by the use of crypto to conduct remittances in these particular…

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has established a Sustainable Finance Advisory Panel (SFAP) for guidance on its strategies and initiatives to build a credible and vibrant sustainable finance ecosystem. The SFAP comprises a diverse group of senior sustainability experts from financial institutions, academia, and other stakeholders from across the world, reflecting the multi-disciplinary nature of the sustainability agenda. Membership of the SFAP: Dr. Celine Herweijer Chief Sustainability Officer, HSBC Jane Ambachtsheer, Global Head of Sustainability, BNP Paribas Asset Management Jeremy Nixon, Chief Executive Officer, Ocean Network Express Martin Weymann, Head Group Sustainability, Swiss Re Management Dr. Nina Seega, Research…

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) found that it is taking longer than expected to design a fair and effective framework for the equitable sharing of losses resulting from scams, Minister of State for Trade and Industry Alvin Tan said in a parliamentary reply. The regulator has been working with the industry to finalise a framework in coordination with other government agencies. In light of this, MAS said that it aims to seek public comments on the framework as soon as possible. At the broader level, the Inter-Ministry Committee on Scams (IMCS), chaired by the Ministry of Home Affairs, has…

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has launched the ESG Impact Hub to drive collaboration and co-location between ESG fintech startups and solution providers, financial institutions and real economy stakeholders. The launch was officiated by Ravi Menon, Managing Director of MAS. Located at The Great Room at Afro-Asia which provides catered hotdesking and dedicated office packages, partners will also be eligible to access the full range of The Great Room’s other offices, located across Singapore, Hong Kong and Bangkok. The hub will also anchor industry-driven sustainability initiatives such the Point Carbon Zero Programme and KPMG’s ESG Business Foundry. The establishment…

The Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET) has launched an ESG Data Platform to strengthen the capital market’s ecosystem on sustainability. The platform offers an end-to-end ESG data management system from listed companies’ data filing to analytics and distributed ESG data to stakeholders. The platform will have a full range of structured data in quantitative term, which stakeholders can make comparisons of different industries or analyse the financial data conveniently. It also supports the listed companies prepare for an ESG disclosure in accordance to the Form 56-1 One report of the Securities and Exchange Commission, and other ESG reporting frameworks. In…

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. The regulator may also place them on its Investor Alert List to warn the public that these entities are not supervised by…

There were 477 cases of banking related phishing scams involving PayNow transactions in 2021 with a median loss of S$3,400, according to statistics from the Singapore Police Force. Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Senior Minister and Minister in charge of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) said that the cases stood at 133 with a median loss of S$1,200 in the first half of 2022. These unauthorised transactions were perpetrated by scammers who had deceived bank customers into giving them their digital banking credentials. The two rounds of anti-scam measures announced by MAS and the Association of Banks in Singapore in January and…

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and Convergence Blended Finance, a global network for blended finance, announced the launch of a S$5 million Asia Climate Solutions Design Grant at the inaugural Transition Finance Towards Net Zero (TFNZ) conference yesterday. Hosted by MAS together with knowledge partners McKinsey & Company and Convergence Blended Finance, and supported by the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ), the conference provides a platform to galvanise key public and private sector stakeholders to mobilise capital at scale to help economies and corporates decarbonise. The conference focused on the theme of scaling “blended finance” which involves…

Sygnum, a digital asset technology group with a Singapore capital markets services (CMS) license, announced it is partnering Thai media and entertainment group T&B Media Global to raise over US$300 million to fund its new interconnected metaverse platform. The raise uses a unique structure hybridising equity and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) like metaverse land NFTs into a financial instrument. T&B Media Global’s new platform, Translucia, enables partners to build interconnected metaverses with real estate developer Magnolia Quality Development Corporation (MQDC) joining as first corporate partner. MQDC will develop a metaverse within Translucia consisting of a virtual city that connects digital buildings…

ADVANCE.AI, a Singapore-based artificial intelligence (AI) and big data company, is partnering with Visa to enhance its credit decisioning for the unbanked and underbanked segments across Southeast Asia. The strategic data partnership will see ADVANCE.AI integrate Visa’s Cardholder Transaction Score (CTS) into its core suite of services comprising digital identity verification, risk management and credit decisioning services. CTS is a creditworthiness score derived from Visa debit or credit card spend volume and categories, spend stability and authorisation declines. This score is not available through traditional credit bureau reports and can be used to complement traditional credit scoring variables, resulting in…

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) says that leadership development is an important area of focus for the Talent and Leaders in Finance (TLF) programme under the Financial Services Industry Transformation Map 2025. The Financial Sector Development Fund (FSDF) has set aside S$400 million to support the programme till 2025 to nurture more Singaporean specialists and leaders in finance. Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Senior Minister and Minister in charge of MAS said in a parliamentary response that the new Overseas Networks and Expertise (One) Pass programme is essential to help attract high-quality global talent that can take on some of these leadership…

Shopping and rewards platform ShopBack announced that it has extended its Series F funding round with US$80 million of equity capital from Temasek’s 65 Equity Partners. The completion of the raise is subject to customary regulatory approvals. This follows an earlier US$80 million tranche led by Asia Partners in July 2022, bringing its ongoing Series F round to a total of US$160 million. Additionally, 65 Equity Partners will join ShopBack Board of Directors and play a direct role in supporting the group’s public readiness efforts. ShopBack said the capital will be invested into launching new shopping products for users, developing…

The experience of the modern customers is no longer benchmarked against competing banks but rather the bigtechs and the superapps of the world. In order to keep up, your bank needs to be a hub of a broad financial ecosystem, with your customers at the helm – making a platform strategy essential. How are today’s leading banks harnessing the power of platformification? Join our webinar to learn about these key topics and more: Designing a web of partnerships between your bank and 3rd party providers Using robust, flexible and open platforms Creating entirely new digital business models Panelists: Sheyantha Abeykoon,…

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…

Indonesia, Southeast Asia’s largest economy, has emerged over the past couple of years as one of the region’s biggest fintech hubs. Home to 785 fintech companies, as of late 2021, Indonesia is currently Southeast Asia’s second largest fintech startup community. These companies secured 26% of all fintech funding amount across Southeast Asia, second only to Singapore (44%), showcasing the scale and weight it has on the region’s fintech ecosystem. Indonesia’s booming fintech sector has been driven by a number of factors, including the rise of digital merchants, accelerating consumers adoption of fintech solutions, and bullishness in the investor community in…

Enhancing payments connectivity, digitalizing the financial infrastructure and promoting green finance will be among the main areas of focus for Singapore’s central bank and financial regulator in the years to come. These priorities were unveiled in the refreshed Financial Services Industry Transformation Map (ITM) 2025, released by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) earlier this month. The roadmap sets out the key growth strategies for the sector for this year onward. It strives for the Singaporean finance sector to grow by an average annual rate of 4-5% from 2021 to 2025, create more than 3,000 jobs on average each year,…

ChainUp, a Singapore-based blockchain technology service provider, welcomes Singapore’s former Prime Minister, Emeritus Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong as a special advisor to its board. Joining him on the newly appointed board are OCBC’s Chairman Ooi Sang Kuang; Huobi Group’s Co-founder Du Jun; Ong Chong Tee who is Chairman of Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority (ACRA);  BURGESS’ Chairman of Asia Jean-Marc Poullet; David Tung, and Li Xiao who is the founding partner at Joy Capital. The announcement was made at ChainUp’s fifth anniversary celebrations where the firm also completed and formalised the acquisition of licensed asset management firm Bedrock Trust.…

The Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) and the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) are seeking feedback on making the Singapore Quick Response Code (SGQR) more interoperable. The consultation paper seeks views on IMDA’s and MAS’ proposals to introduce a set of guidelines to set out the central bank’s expectations on all Relevant Merchant Acquirers through their participation in the SGQR. IMDA and MAS are also considering introducing a fee structure model for SGQR members and conducting regular batched onboarding exercises for merchant acquirers who wish to join. Major payment institutions, exempt payment service providers that provide merchant acquisition services as…

Across the globe, financial institutions are under increasing pressure to remain competitive in a rapidly changing financial services landscape. Challenger banks and fintechs are leveraging modern technology stacks and agile operating models to innovate at speed and build modern, customer-centric financial solutions that consumers have come to expect. Meanwhile, many incumbents remain in a holding pattern, running legacy core platforms which, apart from being expensive and time consuming to maintain, can seriously hamper their ability to remain competitive. And it’s not only pressure from within the financial services industry causing sleepless nights for many incumbents; tech giants with seriously deep…

Market intelligence firm IDC has published the 2022 IDC Fintech Rankings, a listing of technology providers based on calendar year revenues from financial institutions for hardware, software, and/or services. The providers featured supply the technological backbone of the financial services industry, an industry in which IDC forecasts worldwide spending on information technology solutions to be US$590 billion by 2025. The rankings feature two main lists: the IDC Fintech Rankings Top 100, which names the top 100 vendors that approximately derive more than one-third of their revenue from the financial services and fintech industries; and the IDC Fintech Rankings Enterprise Top 25, which ranks…