Airome Technologies, a Singapore-based developer of cybersecurity solutions for digital banking and e-document management systems, has been working with authentication and transaction confirmation technologies for a while, creating advanced products in this field. However, with the pandemic situation the company has faced a new challenge as to how to personalise a user’s device to enable them to authenticate in this new normal. As Airome Technologies works with critical data, they need to use more than just passwords to authenticate a user. It is essential to provide strong cryptographic authentication with key distribution schemes. For an example, a standard case for…

If fintech brands aren’t mindful of today’s looming threats, they may find themselves losing out not just to banks, but to non-financial brands. Think Apple’s wildly successful credit card debut, with over $10 billion dollars of extended credit within two months of launch, or how Starbucks holds over $1 billion in customer mobile payments in their app. What does it take to build a powerful, growth-oriented customer messaging strategy? Here are four winning tips to get your messaging right. 1. Know Your Customer—for Real, in Real Time Financial brands can benefit from the rich data they capture from customer transactions.…

South East Asia’s P2P financing platform, Funding Societies also known as Modalku in Indonesia, announced that Samsung Venture Investment Corporation has invested in its latest funding round. Funding Societies intends to expand its technology team across to tap tech and data talent from across the region. The funds raised will also be channeled towards developing the firm’s strategic and new business models in its next stage of evolution. This comes on the back of earlier investments from Sequoia India, Softbank Ventures Asia Corp, SG Innovate, BRI Ventures, Qualgro Partners and Endeavor amongst others. Additionally, the platform has raised credit lines…

In Southeast Asia, governments are pushing for greater adoption of digital financial services by introducing favorable regulations on digital onboarding, digital banking, and more, experts said on December 3, 2020. During a virtual panel discussion with Fintech News last week, banking executives, digital banking innovators and eKYC experts discussed the state of digital identity and digital onboarding in Southeast Asia, highlighting the developments that have been made this year to encourage digital banking. In the Philippines, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, the country’s central bank, recently approved new regulations on digital banking and introduced a four-year strategy on digital payments. These…

Carro, South East Asia’s automotive marketplace, has launched a behaviour and usage-based car insurance (UBI) in partnership with Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Group Holdings (MSIG), a member of MS&AD, a Japanese insurance company. Drivers in South East Asia will enjoy tailored insurance policies and pricing that reflect their actual driving behaviour. Instead of the traditional packages, the auto insurance premiums will be calculated by applying data science which analyses driver behaviour and distance travelled. The press release made no mention of whether additional devices will be installed or data of driving behavior will be collected in-app. The insurance offering inherently encourages…

Standard Chartered Bank (Singapore) Limited (SCBSL) has been awarded enhanced Significantly Rooted Foreign Bank (SRFB) privileges by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), indicating that it is making moves for a second digital-only bank after its launch of Mox. The Mox virtual bank is among the eight entities that were granted a virtual banking license last year by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority. The bank was also reported to have hired digibank expert Alex Twigg who had co-founded Australian challenger bank Judo. The enhanced SRFB privileges give the bank the opportunity to secure an additional full bank license to establish…

The COVID-19 pandemic has given the global fintech market a boost, with firms in areas including digital custody, digital asset exchange, digital savings, wealthtech and digital payments recording above-average increases in transaction volume in H1 2020, according to a joint study by the World Bank, the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance at the University of Cambridge’s Judge Business School, and World Economic Forum. The 2020 Global COVID-19 Fintech Market Rapid Assessment Study, released on December 3, shares findings from a survey of 1,385 fintech firms operating in 169 countries. The research found that across 13 fintech verticals, only digital lending…

The Singapore Fintech Festival (SFF) 2020 took place between December 7 to 11 this year, featuring a unique hybrid format that combined a 24-hour online platform with satellites events around the world. The 2020 week-long fintech gathering included more than 600 sessions over five days, 1,400 speakers, more than 1,000 exhibitors, 27 international pavilions, and more than 60,000 participants representing over 7,000 global companies from more than 130 countries. Like previous years, Singapore Fintech Festival 2020 saw several major announcements being made, including product launches, fintech partnerships, and updates on key initiatives These exciting news come on the heels of…

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has announced the results of the MAS Global FinTech Innovation Challenge 2020. The MAS Global FinTech Innovation Challenge comprises 2 distinct competitions; MAS Global FinTech Hackcelerator and MAS FinTech Awards with a total cash prize of S$1,750,000. Under the theme of “Building Resilience, Seizing Opportunities, Emerging Stronger”, three winners for the Global FinTech Hackcelerator and twelve winners for the MAS FinTech Awards have been selected for their solutions that address the challenges faced by the financial industry due to the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change. Both awards were handed out at the Singapore FinTech…

Snowdrop Solutions unveiled a partnership with Visa to provide location-enriched services to banks and financial services firms throughout the Asia Pacific region, enabling consumers to better see and understand where they spend their money. The two companies said they would work together to distribute Snowdrop’s technologies and services to Visa’s existing banking customers in order to meet the accelerating demand for new customer-centric banking services across the region. This announcement follows a similar partnership announced by Visa and Snowdrop in Europe several months ago. Today, many consumers are confused when reviewing their card transactions. Often, they do not recognise the…

DBS announced that it will set up a digital exchange with Singapore Exchange (SGX) holding a 10% stake, enabling investors to tap into a fully integrated tokenisation, trading and custody ecosystem for digital assets. Crypto trading activities is said to start as early as next week. They shared the platform will be operating during Asian trading hours from 9:00 am to 5:00pm. Loh Boon Chye, CEO of SGX, said, “We are excited to apply our strengths in market infrastructure and risk management to this venture. There are significant opportunities to bring trust and efficiency in price discovery to the global…

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and the Magyar Nemzeti Bank (MNB) has signed a Co-operation Agreement (CA) to strengthen cooperation in fintech innovation between Singapore and Hungary. The CA sets out a framework for fintech collaboration between both countries. It will put in place a referral mechanism to help fintech firms access each other’s markets. MAS and MNB have also committed to exchange views on emerging market trends and developments in fintech, as well as regulatory issues on financial services innovation. The CA will also facilitate joint innovation projects between MAS and MNB. Sopnendu Mohanty, Chief FinTech Officer, MAS…

Bangkok Bank PLC announced the launch of its Thai language Artificial Intelligence (AI) powered chatbot that was built in-house in a joint collaboration with Singapore-based fintech startup Pand.ai. The chatbot called TT01 was a result of Bangkok Bank’s innovation programme, InnoHub. The development began earlier this year and the chatbot was fully completed in October. The solution will be available to clients of Pand.ai. Meanwhile, Bangkok Bank will use this as a digital sales assistant on LINE for their sales and relationship managers, scheduled to launch in Q1 2021. This adds to Pand.ai’s growing portfolio of languages available on its…

Despite disruptions brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, four in five fintech firms in ASEAN will push ahead with their expansion plans in the next two years, this is according to a report by UOB, PwC and the Singapore Fintech Association. The optimism comes on the back of the accelerated trend in digital adoption across ASEAN amid the pandemic, with more than 40 million new internet users this year. Seventy percent of the ASEAN population today use the internet and this is expected to continue to increase in the next decade as digital services such as online marketplaces become commonplace.…

Mastercard and Pine Labs will launch their integrated “pay later” solution in five more South East Asian markets early next year. This will offer consumers the flexibility of zero-interest instalments on purchases, expand business for merchants and connect banks, fintechs, payment gateways and device makers to a rapidly growing financing alternative. By combining the expertise and technology assets of Mastercard and Pine Labs, an India-based provider of retail point of sale (POS) solutions, the expansion adds to their existing “pay later” partnership in India and Malaysia that started in early 2020. The solution will be rolled out in Thailand and…

Insurance is a crucial aspect of every individual’s financial planning, while much of the world has been focusing on how to get more people insured, little discussions have been had surrounding the pain points and inefficiencies of the insurance claim process. There’s a lot of anxiety during this process, while dealing with his or her medical conditions the individual is also faced with uncertainty over their claimable amount. Hospitals have to access multiple systems to request or provide information to different insurers and what’s worse is that some of the processes are still paper-based. In recognition of these issues Ravi…

Mastercard, in partnership with MatchMove, a Singapore-based ‘Banking-as-a-Service’ provider and Tappy Technologies, a wearable payment integrator, have introduced tokenisation into a small, flexible chip which can be attached to a range of battery-less wearables and accessories such as watchstraps or keyrings, turning them into secure contactless payments devices. MatchMove cardholders can now add their Mastercard to this payment chip by placing the wearable or the accessory on a Bluetooth-connected device developed by Tappy Technologies. After downloading the Tappy app and following the in-app instructions, the MatchMove Mastercard will be tokenised via Mastercard’s Digital Enablement Service (MDES) into the secure payment…

During the Singapore Fintech Festival 2020, Ravi Menon, Managing Director, Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) announced that the regulator has made significant headway in the linkage between Singapore’s and Thailand’s national payment systems; PayNow and PromptPay respectively. Monetary Authority of Singapore and Bank of Thailand embarked on this journey three years ago, and it is anticipated that by mid-2021 anyone registered with PayNow or PromptPay will be able to send money from Singapore to Thailand or vice versa, using just their mobile numbers. Ravi added that this will be secure, instant and at competitive rates at any time of the…

In financial services, the growing number of fintech startups and incumbents’ late-to-the-game focus on technology has led to some of the fiercest competition of any industry. Banks are throwing multi-billion-dollar technology budgets into digital transformation initiatives, while fintech brands are racing to build out more products. Fintechs still have key advantages over financial services incumbents. They can spin up new experiences at a much faster speed, thanks to modern technology stacks and more nimble team structures. But, many fintechs lack the brand reputation and customer base needed to compete effectively with the giants, which continue to dominate market share. When…

SIX Digital Exchange, a Swiss-based end-to-end platform for digital assets, and SBI Digital Asset Holdings (SBI) announced plans for a digital asset exchange based in Singapore set to go live by 2022. The contemplated venture is set to formalise Singapore operations in 2021, with ambitions to launch into market with active offerings by 2022 or earlier, with international connectivity to respective Swiss, Japanese businesses and other partnerships to follow. This is subject to regulatory approvals from the Monetary Authority of Singapore. The venture will market directly to regulated institutional clients, utilising technologies from both companies to provide institutional grade services…