Companies in Singapore have identified the Internet of Things (IoT) as a key priority to address the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, a new study by Vodafone Business has revealed. According to Vodafone Business’ IoT Spotlight 2020 report, 86% of businesses that have already adopted IoT in Singapore are accelerating some IoT projects because of the pandemic; similarly, 86% highlighted that IoT has risen up the list of priorities during the pandemic. The IoT Spotlight 2020 report is a piece of global research that explores the relationship between IoT, business strategy, resiliency and success. The survey was conducted with more…

Financial services are in the midst of a profound digital transformation, driven by technological advances, changing customer expectations, and the COVID-19 pandemic. The ongoing public health crisis has accelerated the shift to digital, and at this point, it is safe to say that there will be no turning back. “The digital revolution has been accelerated by COVID-19, and it will never go back to the way things were,” Arvind Swami, director of business development for Red Hat’s financial services vertical in Asia Pacific (APAC), told Fintech News Singapore in an interview. “[Digitalization] will only speed up.” Swami added that we…

Standard Chartered Bank has signed on Amazon Web Services (AWS) for a five-year agreement to run its banking systems and customer-facing applications on the latter’s cloud infrastructure. The partnership deepens the existing relationship between the two companies to deliver new personalised banking services in the bank’s 60 markets worldwide. Using AWS’s infrastructure and cloud services across its entire business will enable the bank to be more responsive to customer needs and create new applications. Adopting a cloud-first approach, Standard Chartered will use AWS services including database, containers, compute, networking, storage, and security. Standard Chartered is using Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service…

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) issued a consultation paper on the types of information required for non-face-to-face verification of an individual’s identity or better known as eKYC by the industry. These proposed requirements come against the backdrop of rising impersonation scam cases, and seek to address the risks arising from theft and misuse of an individual’s personal particulars. In the new proposed requirement, it would be mandatory for banks to use one of the following type of information for non face to face verification; passwords or PIN, biometrics, token generated password, or information only known between the bank and…

Grab doubles down on Indonesia by leading a Series B funding round worth US$100 million in Indonesian e-wallet LinkAja and the establishment of a new Tech Center. The funding round includes investments from Telkomsel, BRI Ventura Investama, and Mandiri Capital Indonesia. The funds will be utilised to accelerate LinkAja’s growth aspirations, focused primarily on the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) segments in Indonesia. Commencing its commercial operations in June 2019, the LinkAja e-wallet was a result of synergy between leading Indonesian state-owned enterprises. Anthony Tan, Group CEO and Co-founder of Grab, had previously stated that Indonesia was one of…

Zühlke Group, a Swiss innovation service provider, has appointed Jonas Trindler as the CEO of Zühlke Asia and Aleksandar Marjanovic as the CEO of its Global Delivery Centers from next year onwards. The Asian market and the expansion of Zühlke’s Global Delivery Centers locations are both crucial to the company’s further development as a global service provider. Jonas Trindler has been with Zühlke for 16 years. He has successfully built up and scaled the two Asian locations in Hong Kong and Singapore over the last three and a half years. Zühlke has gained a foothold in the Asian market during…

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has launched a S$35 million Productivity Solutions Grant (PSG) for the financial services sector to help smaller financial institutions adopt digital solutions for more streamlined data reporting to MAS. Supported by the Financial Sector Development Fund, the grant is currently applicable to banks and will be subsequently expanded to include insurers and capital market intermediaries. The PSG provides funding support for smaller financial institutions, no more than 200 employees, to adopt regulatory reporting solutions from pre-approved managed service providers. These technologies will facilitate more efficient processes for the preparation and submission of data, in…

With the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, a growing number of webinars and virtual events are being hosted to provide industry participants with networking opportunities all the while ensuring people’s health and safety. For those stuck at home but who still want to keep up with the rapidly changing fintech landscape, we’ve compiled a list of the top 15 fintech webinars and virtual events to attend if you are located in an Asia Pacific (APAC) time zone. Blockchain & Distributed Ledger Technology in Financial Services On Demand Join industry experts from R3, Sygnum, and Temasek in this session moderated by Zuhlke for…

Amid COVID-19, central banks and financial regulators around the world are increasing their prioritization of fintech, with 85% of them indicating a high or increased focus on fintech in light of the pandemic, according to a new study by the World Bank and the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance. In a report titled The Global COVID-19 Fintech Regulatory Rapid Assessment Study, the organizations share findings from a study conducted March and August 2020 of 118 regulatory authorities in 114 jurisdictions around the world. The research found that across the globe, financial regulators are putting innovation as their number one priority as…

WhatsApp has rolled out a secure payments feature for its users in India, the experience is said to make the process transferring money as easy as sending a message. WhatsApp designed the payments feature in partnership with the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) using the Unified Payment Interface (UPI), an India-first, real-time payment system that enables transactions with over 160 supported banks. This move ties in with India’s campaign to increase the ease and use of digital payments, helping to expand financial inclusion in India. In order to make payments through WhatsApp in India, users need to have a bank…

Singapore Fintech Festival (SFF), the largest annual fintech festival in the world, is coming back in December 2020 for the second edition of its SFF x SWITCH event in collaboration with Singapore Week of Innovation and TeCHnology. Set against a backdrop of global challenges arising from the COVID-19 pandemic, this year’s SFF x SWITCH event will take place between December 7 and 11, 2020, and will be articulated around the theme “People and Talent.” The event will celebrate the people who are creating new opportunities and showcase the role models of today who show resilience during challenging times, as well…

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) announced Thursday that 40 solutions have been shortlisted for the MAS FinTech Awards to be presented at this year’s Singapore FinTech Festival x Singapore Week of Innovation and TeCHnology (SFF x SWITCH). The theme for this year’s Awards is “Building Resilience, Seizing Opportunities, Emerging Stronger”. Organised in partnership with PwC Singapore, the Awards seek to recognise ground-breaking solutions that enable the financial sector to respond better to two key global challenges; responding to COVID-19 and sustainability. MAS received 326 submissions this year – a 33% increase from 2019 – from applicants across 55 countries.…

Microsoft and Bukalapak, an Indonesian e-commerce platform, have formed a strategic partnership where the latter will adopt Microsoft Azure as its preferred cloud platform. Microsoft will also make a strategic investment in Bukalapak. “This partnership signals a deep collaboration with Microsoft on an array of technology projects that will transform the technology-driven commerce solutions and operations solution and operations in Indonesia. As a global technology leader, Microsoft’s confidence with Bukalapak highlights our position as the leading homegrown technology player in Indonesia and our continued objective to create a positive impact on our country and customers.” said Rachmat Kaimuddin, CEO of…

United Overseas Bank (UOB) has picked VMware, provider of cloud computing and virtualisation software and services, to deploy a secure virtual desktop for its team of information technology (IT) developers. According to their statement, the deployment was done in only 21 days instead taking up three months. UOB DevTop provides IT developers with a secure sandbox to test and to implement upgrades to UOB’s digital services and solutions, which they said enabled its IT developers to meet the bank’s software development schedules without disruption or delay as they move to work from home. UOB DevTop was developed by integrating VMware’s…

Wave Money, a Myanmar-based mobile financial services provider, announced that its WavePay application has crossed 1.1 million monthly active users in October. With a remittance value reportedly reaching 8 Trillion Myanmar Kyat (US$ 5.9 billion) from January to September 2020, Wave Money posted a daily average growth of 162% in new WavePay registrations by comparison to January 2020. The figures were reported in accordance with the internationally-recognised metrics of the GSM Association (GSMA), reflecting the strong market opportunity and rapid adoption of mobile money in Myanmar. “This is a very exciting milestone because it’s a positive indicator not only of…

Over the past years, cloud computing has become a key technological enabler for innovative service development, allowing industries to tap into new service models and improve productivity, cost-efficiency and flexibility. Banking and capital markets leaders are increasingly recognizing that cloud is no longer just an option but a necessity at this point as demand for online and digital banking services surges, and technology continues to disrupt the sector. According to Standard Chartered’s group chief information officer Michael Gorriz, demand for cloud services has surged over the last couple of years driven by the rise of the digital economy but COVID-19…

The National Bank of Cambodia has officially launched its retail central bank digital currency (CBDC) named Project Bakong, co-developed by Japanese fintech company SORAMITSU. The central bank is the first in South East Asia to do so. Bakong is a multi-stakeholder system that enables instant and final transactions using digital Cambodian Riel (KHR) or United States Dollars (USD). Bakong is said to work seamlessly and securely in concert with Cambodia’s legacy payment systems, and has already been embraced by 18 financial institutions nationwide. A smartphone app allows anyone with a domestic phone number and bank account to maintain a digital…

Hong Kong-based financial management platform CompareAsiaGroup has announced the acquisition of Seedly, a finance assistant platform in Singapore. This strategic investment takes place two years after Seedly was acquired by ShopBack, a discovery and rewards platform that powers smarter purchase decisions. CompareAsiaGroup is said to have a portfolio of brands across six markets in Asia including Hong Kong, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand. Seedly will continue to run as an independently-branded standalone platform working closely with CompareAsiaGroup to further develop the personal finance community in Singapore and beyond. “We are extremely proud of our teams delivering such strong…

Finastra announced the launch of its data platform, the Fusion Data Cloud. The suite of solutions is designed to help financial institutions improve customer engagement, grow revenue, digitise processes for efficiency, and manage risk. Underpinned by the FusionFabric.cloud open developer platform, Fusion Data Cloud provides a data ecosystem which is supported by the Microsoft Azure technology. The solution enables banks to share their data with fintech companies, as well as ingest data from external data sources. This according to them, enables banks to create innovative new data solutions in weeks, instead of months. These solutions are pre-integrated with Finastra’s core…

Razer Fintech is deepening their collaboration with FWD Singapore (FWD), by providing insurance coverage to its users in Singapore as part of the recently launched Razer Card The former had recently collaborated with Visa, to unveil the Razer Card which will be made available to 1,337 selected users from now till 31 December, via an exclusive beta testing programme. FWD will offer S$100,000 complimentary term life insurance coverage to each those who qualify to be Razer Premium Card holders. Razer Fintech and FWD have previously collaborated to launch products such as the Covid-19 insurance plan that have been made available via…