Author: Fintech News Singapore

Vietnamese e-commerce platform Buy2Sell announced a new strategic partnership with Mastercard to enable multiple payment types to a variety of delivery channels via a single connection through Mastercard Cross-Border Services. Mastercard Cross-Border Services enable financial institutions and partners to build flexible solutions that support multiple use cases and can reach a variety of payment endpoints globally via a single connection. Mastercard’s platform plays a key role in improving world-wide connectivity and provides innovative payment applications that enable customers with the choice to route transactions over card or account-to-account infrastructure. The Mastercard network supports multiple delivery channels including bank accounts, mobile…

The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) is collaborating with the Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre (DFCRC) to explore use cases for a central bank digital currency (CBDC). The (DFCRC) is a 10-year, A$180 million research programme funded by industry partners, universities and the Australian government, through the Cooperative Research Centres Programme. The project intends to test a general-purpose pilot CBDC issued as a liability of the RBA for use in real world, pilot implementations of services offered by Australian industry participants. The central bank will be exploring any compelling use case for both wholesale and retail CBDCs through this project.…

India-based digital banking infrastructure enabler Signzy announced that it had raised US$26 million in a funding round led by private equity firm Gaja Capital. The round was also joined by its existing investors Vertex Ventures and Arkam Ventures. According to Signzy, it will use the fresh capital to enhance its ‘No-code Workflow Digitalisation’ platform and solutions. Founded in 2015, the firm’s patented No-code AI platform, GO, is reportedly seeing significantly accelerated adoption, as banks and financial services providers accelerate their digital transformation journeys. Signzy has filed eight patents so far in the US, and nine in India, for its innovations.…

Endowus, a Singaporean digital wealth platform licensed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), announced that it has appointed Vinod Raman as its Chief Product Officer. Vinod will lead product management, data and design while driving product strategy, roadmap and execution at Endowus. He brings years of experience from institutional banking, fintech domain knowledge, and expertise in scaling businesses, having spent over a decade in the industry. Prior to Endowus, Vinod spent two years at US-fintech unicorn Stash, heading the Invest product and business areas, where he was responsible for the overall business strategy, product offerings, growth as well as…

Singapore-based global payments company Thunes announced its affiliation with two global ESG initiatives, namely the United Nations Global Compact and Ecovadis. Earlier this year, Thunes said that it had successfully passed sustainability assessments and submitted respective reports to both institutions. As a result, Thunes was awarded the Ecovadis silver medal for 2022, placing the company in the top 25% of performers for business sustainability. The Ecovadis initiative, a business sustainability rating, ranks organisations on their environmental, social, and ethical impact across 198 classifications and 160 countries. The UN Global Compact initiative is the world’s largest corporate sustainability initiative, aiming to…

DBS has rolled out self-directed crypto trading, enabling wealth clients who are accredited investors to trade cryptocurrencies on DDEx. With clients’ bank accounts and DDEx custody accounts seamlessly linked via DBS digibank, clients’ funds can be directly debited. Starting from a minimum investment sum of US$500, accredited wealth clients will be able to trade four cryptocurrencies namely Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, and XRP. Previously, crypto trading on DDEX was limited to corporate and institutional investors, family offices, and clients of DBS Private Bank and DBS Treasures Private Client only. With this latest initiative, the service is now available to accredited…

Home to more than 1,000 fintech companies, 40+ innovation labs and some of the world’s largest financial institutions, Singapore has emerged over the past couple of years as a global fintech powerhouse, a leading position that’s been enabled by the city-state’s conducive regulatory landscape, business-friendly environment and political stability. This leadership has prompted many event organizers to select Singapore as their go-to location to host large-scale fintech conferences and exhibitions, as they viewed the country as an ideal meeting point for industry experts, policymakers, academics and innovators from all over the world to connect and share knowledge. As the year…

Southeast Asian superapp Grab announced that it has promoted Suthen Thomas Paradatheth to Group Chief Technology Officer (GCTO), effective 1 October 2022. Suthen will be responsible for driving Grab’s technology vision, strategy and execution across its deliveries, mobility, and financial services businesses. He will focus on strengthening Grab’s technical infrastructure to enable deeper superapp synergies and faster product innovation. He will also oversee Grab’s global network of eight Research and Development (R&D) Centres. Suthen was Grab’s first technical lead when the company was founded in 2012. Over the past decade, he held both technical and operational leadership roles and founded…

Hashstacs (STACS), a blockchain-based fintech firm focused on Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG), has partnered with France’s Everimpact to provide banks and corporates involved in the carbon market with greater transparency and trust. The partnership aims to promote data-backed carbon credits with end-to-end traceability. The first phase of the project will include technical integration of Everimpact’s Digital Monitoring, Reporting, and Verification (DMRV) carbon tracking platform to the blockchain-based ESGpedia, which powers the ESG Registry of the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s (MAS) Project Greenprint. There will be greater transparency of the carbon credits lifecycle, with buyers and users being able to…

Singapore-based fintech firm #dltledgers announced that it has raised S$8.5 million in a Series B funding round to fuel its North American expansion plans. According to #dltledgers, the recent fundraise has pushed its valuation to S$100 million, up from S$46 million after its Series A round just over a year ago. The firm is looking to extend the round to S$15 million, to close off by the end of October. #dltledgers said that there are ongoing conversations for further closures and will lead to a close acquisition of strategic investors within the round. The company did not give further information…

Recent projects failure and crash in the cryptocurrency market, including the Terra/Luna debacle, have pushed crypto prices further down and triggered an increase in distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. As crypto markets continue to plunge and show no sign of recovery, DDoS attacks are set to continue to rise in number and intensity, a new report by Russian cybersecurity and anti-virus provider Kaspersky says. Crypto markets have been falling since their peak in November 2021, but the demise of the Terra ecosystem, which saw its terraUSD (UST) and luna tokens lose nearly US$45 billion in value within 72 hours in May,…

Huawei’s 7th annual flagship event HUAWEI CONNECT 2022 kicked off yesterday in Bangkok with the theme “Unleash Digital”, gathering over 10,000 ICT industry leaders, experts, and partners from around the world. The three-day conference in Bangkok is the first stop on HUAWEI CONNECT’s global tour in 2022. HUAWEI CONNECT 2022 aims to explore how to more effectively unleash digital productivity, promote the digital economy, and build up stronger digital ecosystems. Featuring two keynote sessions, six summits, as well as multiple breakout sessions and demos, this year’s event dives into the challenges that governments and enterprises face at all stages of…

India’s fintech industry has grown as a rapid pace over the past years, and stands today as the world’s third largest fintech startup hub. Locally, fintech companies raised a staggering US$29 billion in funding in the first seven months of 2022, the fourth largest sum by any country in the world. The country now clocks 37 fintech unicorns, ranking fourth in term of global fintech unicorn strength. Yet, despite these achievements and a strong position in the global fintech market, industry leaders are skeptical about the profitability of the sector over the coming years, a new study by Boston Consulting…

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and India’s International Financial Services Centres Authority (IFSCA) has signed a co-operation agreement to facilitate regulatory collaboration and partnership in fintech. Based in Gujarat, IFSCA is a unified authority for the development and regulation of financial products, financial services and financial institutions in the International Financial Services Centres in India. The regulators said in a joint statement that MAS and IFSCA will leverage existing regulatory sandboxes in their respective jurisdictions to support experimentation of technology innovations. This includes referral of companies to each other’s regulatory sandboxes and enable innovative cross-border experiments in both jurisdictions. The…

By 2030, blockchain-enabled asset tokenization is expected to grow fiftyfold into a US$16.1 trillion business opportunity, a rise which will be driven by demand for greater access to private markets and illiquid assets such as real estate and commodities, a new report by global consulting firm the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and ADDX, a digital exchange for private markets, says. Globally, growth in tokenized assets is expected to be strong within the next couple of years. Real estate, equities, bonds and investment funds, as well as less traditional assets such as car fleets and patents, are set to make up…

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a spike in demand for digital banking experiences, a shift which banks and financial services institutions around the world have responded promptly to by accelerating product roadmaps and enabling new digital experiences. But despite a clear surge in digital banking and transactions, industry stakeholders believe that customers still value the human connection in financial services, especially when it comes to more complex products. During Fintech News Singapore’s latest Fintech Fireside Asia panel session, top executives representing Standard Chartered Bank, Tune Protect Group, Kenanga Investment Bank, and OneSpan Australia and New Zealand, discussed the digitalization…

BNB Chain and Google Cloud have formed a partnership to provide early stage Web3 and blockchain projects with foundational infrastructure, cloud computing credits, mentorship, and enhanced technical support. BNB Chain, a combination of BNB Beacon Chain and BNB Smart Chain, has over 1,300 active decentralised applications (dApps) in its ecosystem and claims to be the largest smart contract blockchain in terms of transaction volume and users in Web3. Startups leveraging BNB Chain’s infrastructure can now build on Google Cloud’s cloud infrastructure and use its services for on-demand analysis of on-chain data and data encryption while it is being processed in…

Southeast Asian fintech Fazz — a business account for businesses of all sizes to pay, save and get credit — has raised US$100 million in Series C funding. The US$75 million in equity includes investment from existing investors such as Tiger Global, DST Investment, B Capital, Insignia Ventures Partners and ACE & Company. Ilham Ltd, EDBI, InterVest, Michael Seibel (Y Combinator) and Hans Tung (GGV Capital) participated in the round. The company has also signed a term sheet with Lendable for a US$25 million debt facility. Fazz, previously known as the Fazz Financial Group, is a merger between Indonesia-founded PayFazz and…

Social networking giant Meta Platforms is targeting opportunities related to commerce and payments, leveraging on the popularity of WhatsApp in emerging markets to establish the messaging app as a core communication tool and sales channel for small businesses. This ambition has materialized over the past year through integrations with and investments in strategic partners across Asia-Pacific (APAC). In India, WhatsApp launched a few weeks ago its partnership with e-commerce platform JioMart, allowing people to browse the JioMart catalog, add products to their cart and pay to complete purchases, all within WhatsApp. The integration represents the first end-to-end shopping experience in…

Singapore’s wealthtech sector is growing at a fast pace. Amid soaring venture funding and booming adoption of robo-advisors, the city-state is on a path to becoming a leading wealthtech hub in Asia-Pacific (APAC), a new report by KPMG and Endowus, a local digital advisor, says. The report, which looks at the progress of wealthtech developments, points to rising investment activity in the country, noting that over the past four years, venture funding to Singapore-based wealthtechs grew seven-fold from US$23 million in 2017 to US$161 million in 2021, drastically outpacing Asia’s two-fold growth from US$1.1 billion to US$2.2 billion. In the…