Clik, a Cambodian fintech startup, has completed the final close of its US$3.7 million seed round led by Openway and Poems Pte Ltd along with several global angel investors, a third of which are Cambodia-based. This round of financing, which includes the US$2 million of commitments announced at the end of 2018, will enable Clik to scale its product engineering and customer service teams as it progresses towards its official launch in Cambodia by the end of 2020. Matthew Tippetts, CEO and Co-Founder of Clik said, “The closing of our seed round is a sign that investors are eager to…

Huawei announced that it will be hosting its APAC Financial Industry Storage Summit 2020 on the 13th August 2020. The high-level summit is targeted at keeping the C-level from banks informed on the latest trends, developments and challenges in data storage. This is becoming increasingly crucial as the world rapidly becomes more digital, thanks largely to ubiquitous connectivity and an entire generation of people who are digital natives. There are no signs of the digital revolution slowing down as many of the markets in Asia-Pacific including Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines have all moved towards introducing regulations to facilitate the…

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), the National Research Foundation (NRF) and the National University of Singapore (NUS) will be jointly setting up a research institute that will develop deep capabilities to support the needs of digital financial services in Asia. Dubbed as the Asian Institute of Digital Finance (AIDF), operations for the research institute is expected to begin by end of this year. The regional research institute will establish a unique “Fincubator” programme to promote entrepreneurship and provide the support to drive transformation of ideas and projects by promising students and entrepreneurs into market-ready products and services. Mr Ravi…

Grab Financial Group (GFG), the fintech arm of Grab today announced the launch of a suite of financial products. The three main products GFG is launching under their new strategy dubbed as ‘Thrive with Grab’ are a micro-investment platform named Auto Invest; consumer loans via Grab’s third-party loan platform, and the buy-now-pay-later payment plans for select e-commerce sites. The micro-investment solution was formed as a result of their acquisition of robo-advisory firm Bento in February 2020.  This solution allows Singapore users to ‘invest as they spend” with their Grab transactions. AutoInvest monies are invested in fixed-income funds offered by Fullerton…

Vesta, a fintech firm focused on fraud protection, has secured a strategic investment from EDBI, a corporate investment arm of the Singaporean Economic Development Board. This investment, along with a strategic alignment with EDBI, will accelerate the company’s momentum and efforts to expand its fraud and approval enhancement platform across Asia Pacific (APAC). As a result, Vesta will also move to locate its regional headquarters in Singapore. Hailing from the United States, Vesta recently raised US$ 125 million in new growth capital from private equity firm Goldfinch Partners. The funding provides the company with the resources to invest in growth…

UOB Indonesia launched TMRW, its digital bank to serve the Indonesian market as part of the group’s strategy to accelerate growth of its regional customer franchise, which follows their initial launch in Thailand in 2019. A key feature that they are known for includes a game called City of TMRW, where customers can build a virtual city whenever they save. As users level up, they can unlock various options to enhance their virtual city. They said that the account opening process is designed to be intuitive, seamless, fast and secure. Verification of an identity is done via a video call…

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and Enterprise Singapore announced that the Singapore FinTech Festival (SFF) x Singapore Week of Innovation & TeCHnology (SWITCH) will expand to become the world’s first week-long round-the-clock, hybrid digital and physical event. Running from 7 to 11 December 2020, participants may attend in person at key physical locations around the world as well as be connected in an online city experience. SFF x SWITCH 2020 will provide a combined online-offline platform for the global fintech and deep tech communities to continue to engage and connect in spite of the current challenges with international travel.…

Standard Chartered is the latest bank to get into the crypto custody business, unveiled earlier this month that its innovation, ventures and fintech investments unit, SC Ventures, has been working on a solution for the institutional market that would support cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin but also security tokens, according to a CoinDesk report. The first pilot of the service could launch before the end of the year. Alex M­­­­­anson, the head of Singapore-based SC Ventures, told the media outlet that the firm has been developing “one of the most secure crypto custody solutions on the market,” adding that as many…

Singapore’s central bank, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), is proposing new regulations that it would give it more power to regulate the financial services industry, notably in the fields cybersecurity and virtual assets, the regulator said on July 21. The new act would introduce new regulations for virtual asset service providers created in Singapore for anti-money laundering and countering of financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) purposes, and would expand MAS’s power to impose requirements on technology risk management. The proposed regulations would also allow MAS to issue prohibition orders to individuals deemed unsuitable to work in the financial industry, and…

Advancement in biometric technology, including facial recognition, touch ID fingerprint sensors and voice recognition, is creating new opportunities for fintech innovators to streamline the customer experience. Facial recognition in particular is seeing rising adoption in Asia but also other parts of the world as a new way to make digital payments more convenient and prevent fraud. It’s a trend that is picking up right here at home, DBS announced in July 2020 that Singpass users will be able to sign up for DBS’ digital banking services using facial recognition technology. Similarly UOB’s digital bank in Thailand, UOB TMRW has also…

Jumio, a renowned provider of AI-powered end-to-end identity verification and authentication solutions, today announced the biggest quarter for customer growth in the company’s history. Jumio says its growth was spurred by financial services and healthcare organizations which were forced to accelerate digital transformation in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. The second quarter was marked by a number of milestones for the company. Market trends shifting to telehealth and remote new account onboarding fuelled significant gains in new business growth, which collectively grew by more than 100% year-over-year. Moreover, business from Jumio’s ecosystem partners increased tenfold in Q2 over first quarter…

Despite widespread adoption of remote working and digital transformation, finance transformation is still lagging amongst Singaporean businesses, resulting in companies losing US$340 million (S$473 million) annually to inefficiencies and manual processes, according to a new study commissioned by SAP Concur. The study, conducted by Consulting Group – Asia Insight, surveyed over 2,000 employees across 12 Asia Pacific (APAC) countries including Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines, to evaluate employee expectations and identify gaps in expense management, business travel and remote work processes. According to the survey’s findings, there is a “worrying” lag in finance transformation with a staggering 33% of local…

TransferWise announced today a new partnership with Singapore-based fintech Aspire, concurrent with news of its valuation jumping to US$ 5 billion. Aspire provides digital financial services such as credit lines, business accounts and corporate cards for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). In this partnership, Aspire will be integrated with “TransferWise for Banks”. With this integration, entrepreneurs and businesses will be able to tap into TransferWise’s fast and low-cost international transfers directly through their Aspire accounts. They claim that the transfers will be around 4 times cheaper on average compared to banks. Aspire’s co-founder, Andrea Baronchelli said, “We’re excited that small…

In Singapore, the first digital banking licenses are expected to be granted by the end of this year, marking the debut of a new area in the city-state’s banking industry. In June last year, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) announced that it would issue two digital full bank licenses and three digital wholesale bank licenses in a bid to spur innovation by opening up the market to new players. Out of the 21 digital banking applications received, 14 eligible applicants (five digital full banks and nine digital wholesale banks), will progress to the next stage of assessment. According to…

Thought Machine, the cloud-native core banking technology firm, marks its entrance into the Asia Pacific market by announcing the signing of an additional US$42 million in funding for its Series B round. This round extension will close in early August and is led by Eurazeo Growth, with British Patient Capital and SEB also coming in as new investors. This brings the round’s total value to US$125 million following US$83 million secured in March led by Draper Esprit and joined by Lloyds Banking Group, IQ Capital, Backed and Playfair Capital. Thought Machine’s Singapore-based Managing Director APAC, Nick Wilde said, “We help…

In its fifth edition, the flagship industry conference Hong Kong FinTech Week this year is launching a unique Global Fast Track Programme to help worldwide including Singapore innovative technology companies connect with the leading financial institutions, investors and regulators in Hong Kong. Selected candidates will have a rare opportunity to pitch their solution directly to senior executives of Corporate Champions, including AMTD Group, Hong Kong Exchange, Microsoft, and also regulators including Hong Kong Monetary Authority. The program is free to participate in with an application deadline on 31 August 2020. Successful applicants will be matched for one-to-one video meetings, designed…

Financial services group AMTD has reached numerous milestones this year as part of its fintech push. For Calvin Choi, chairman of the AMTD Group, the priorities now are centered around building up its ecosystem across the whole Asian region and grooming the fintech leaders of tomorrow. In the first episode of monthly online talk show Fintech Fireside Asia on July 19, Choi looked back at the key announcements the group has made since the beginning of the year and explained what the group is now focused on. AMTD Group’s SpiderNet AMTD Group’s fintech plans revolve around that the firm refers to…

UOB Asset Management (UOBAM) has launched UOBAM Invest, a robo-advisory mobile app that offers retail investors in Singapore personalised and dynamic investment portfolios. The mobile app is the retail version of the UOBAM Invest online portal, which was first launched in 2018 for corporate investors in Singapore. Retail investors can start investing using UOBAM Invest from S$1 and there are no account opening or closing fees. The advisory fee is 0.8 % per annum for investment amounts of S$25,000 and below, and 0.6 % per annum for investment amounts above S$25,000. UOBAM Invest’s key service is said to be the…

ti&m has named Marc Bühler as the head of its new Singapore office, which opened in late 2019. As the managing director of Asia Pacific, he has been leading the company’s operations there since the start of June. The office had previously been managed on an interim basis from Switzerland by Samuel Scheidegger who heads the product division and serves an executive member of the board at ti&m. Bühler comes to ti&m from Julius Baer, where he began his career as an integration and security engineer in 2008, having graduated with a degree in Information Technology from ETH Zurich. In…

Robo advisor operator StashAway announced today the completion of a $16 million USD Series C fundraising round. Square Peg, the largest venture capital fund in Australia, led the round, and Burda Principal Investments, the growth capital arm of German media and tech company Hubert Burda Media, as well as existing investor Eight Roads Ventures, the global investment firm backed by Fidelity, both also participated in the round. Michele Ferrario, Co-founder and CEO of StashAway says, “This new round of financing further strengthens StashAway’s balance sheet position, bringing our paid-up capital to SGD 50.7 million. This latest round will enable us…