United Overseas Bank (UOB) has teamed up with Visa to tap its new application programming interface (API), claiming to be the first bank in the world to do so. This partnership will enable customers to add their Visa credit and debit cards securely into popular apps using UOB Mighty, without the need for a physical card. The bank has built an ecosystem with partners such as Fave, Fitbit Pay, Grab, Shopee, Singapore Airlines, SP Group and Visa to simplify the way in which their customers make digital payments and redeem rewards points. Kunal Chatterjee, Visa Country Manager for Singapore and Brunei,…

The Association of Banks in Singapore (ABS) announced that all of the nine participating PayNow banks will allow ad-hoc transactions of at least S$5,000 or more. This will enable customers to use PayNow, an electronic fund transfer service, for a wider scope of payments to merchants and friends. The higher limit applies to PayNow on both internet banking and mobile application channels, and includes both scan-and-pay transactions and transfers initiated by entering the NRIC, mobile number, or Unique Entity Number (UEN) of the recipient, without first going through the process of adding the recipient as a payee. Customers will be…

Open banking, one of the hottest topics in financial services today, is bringing in new challenges and risks that both traditional financial institutions and fintech companies must address swiftly, said Frederik Mennes, director of product security at cybersecurity firm OneSpan. In a recent conversation with Finextra, Mennes identified three major security risks brought in by open banking that incumbents and digital banks alike must tackle. The first risk, Mennes said, relates to the fact that open banking requires financial institutions to open up their IT systems and share data with third-party providers (TPPs). “It’s very important that only licensed, authorized…

Following in the footsteps of the European Union, ASEAN is moving towards having its very own Single European Payments Area (SEPA)-style payments network, making Southeast Asia a global focal point for cross-border real-time payments growth, according to a new report by ACI Worldwide and fintech market research and consulting firm Kapronasia. The research, titled Envisioning a pan-regional real-time payment ecosystem in Southeast Asia, looks into the real-time payments landscape across Southeast Asia and the broader Asia Pacific (APAC) region, and delves into the different national payments networks currently in operation. The real-time payments landscape in Southeast Asia The past decade…

Razer Fintech, the financial arm of Razer Inc., has partnered with Singapore-based lifestyle marketing SaaS (Software as a Service) platform, Perx Technologies, to enhance its mobile-first customer engagement in the financial services industry. This partnership will purportedly enable Razer Fintech to redefine the banking experience for its users, especially its target demographic with its aim to build a virtual bank dubbed the “Youth Bank”. The partnership comes on the heels of the news earlier this year that Razer is gearing up for a digital banking license from the Monetary Authority of Singapore. While leveraging on Razer’s following amongst the gaming…

Google has launched its all-in-one peer-to-peer funds transfer service in Singapore in order to streamline transactions from different banks on one platform with via its PayNow feature. Customers of DBS PayLah!, OCBC Bank and Standard Chartered can link their bank accounts to Google Pay to transfer funds to anyone in Singapore through PayNow. They can also pay their favourite merchants through UEN or PayNow QR codes. App users on Android and iOS devices can send and receive money even if the recipient is not on Google Pay. This integration helps Singaporeans who have more than one bank account to streamline…

Fintech unicorn TransferWise announced that its annual revenue had grown by 70%, hitting a profit of £302.6 million (S$531.65m) for the past financial year. TrnasferWise recorded a net profit of £21.3 million (S$37.42m) for fiscal year ending March 2020. The business has consistently reported a profit since 2017. Customers sending money from Europe contributed 52% of TransferWise’s overall revenue. The US business, launched in 2015, now contributes 26% of revenue. The remaining 22% is attributed to the rest of the world including APAC, which is TransferWise’s fastest growing region. Its worth noting that in July this year, the fintech firm…

Singapore-based digital wealth manager Syfe announced that it has successfully closed a SG$25.2 million (US$18.6 million) Series A funding round led by fintech venture capital fund Valar Ventures. Other participants in the round include Presight Capital, and existing investor Unbound, the UK-based investment firm that led Syfe’s seed funding round in July 2019. This latest capital injection will allow Syfe to enter new markets, develop new products and services, hire top talent, and enhance Syfe’s technology platform to continue delivering better user experience. Dhruv Arora, Founder and CEO, Syfe, said: “This fundraising is a pivotal moment in Syfe’s journey and…

At the 2020 Huawei Developer Conference held earlier this week, fintech influencer, best-selling author, and entrepreneur Brett King joined the finance tech.session to talk about the role of technology to improve financial inclusion and shared his views on how banking will look like in the years to come. In light of this, AppGallery has been growing rapidly as it pushes to onboard more financial partners and attract banking apps from different regions. In particular, the app marketplace is seeing strong demand coming from users looking for apps that allow users to manage their finances with their local banks and financial…

Standard Chartered Bank has launched Standard Chartered Places (SC Locate), a new banking enhancement that maps out where users spend their money.  Built in partnership with market leaders Google Maps Platform ​and Snowdrop Solutions, SC Locate will enable the bank’s retail clients to visualise their expenses in an interactive and intuitive way on its digital banking platforms. What is said to be a first in Singapore, this new enhancement will turn confusing transaction information into clean, easily identifiable places  shown on a Google map with real-time notifications. It will also include related logos and categories for major brands, including both…

As a catalyst for digitalization, COVID-19 will further help improve financial inclusion in emerging economies, according to Wissam Khoury, head of international at Finastra. Home to an unbanked population of about 1 billions, Asia has experienced a boom in fintech adoption on the back of a rising Internet penetration rate and the ubiquity of mobile phones. In Thailand, 74% of Internet users access banking through mobile devices, well ahead of the global rate of 41%. In Indonesia, e-money transactions skyrocketed 173% from January 2019 to January 2020. And in Vietnam, though cash remains king, digital payments have surged, jumping 144%…

From September 10 to 12, 2020, Huawei Consumer Business Group (BG) held the annual Huawei Developer Conference. Themed HDC.Together, the event saw multiple announcements being made, including the launch of new products, as well as updates on the Huawei Mobile Services (HMS) ecosystem. Huawei’s developer community and app ecosystem The HMS ecosystem has grown to now counting some 1.8 million developers worldwide, doubling that of last year’s Huawei Developer Conference. This figure makes the HMS ecosystem the third largest mobile ecosystem in the world, Zhang Ping’an, president of consumer cloud service at the Huawei Consumer Business Group, said during his…

When it comes to saving habits, Singaporean Gen Zs (aged 18 – 23) are savvier than their millennial counterparts (aged 24 – 39), a survey by personal finance website SingSaver found. Conducted across August and September, the survey analysed 1,000 responses from these two demographics across Singapore to better understand their saving habits, investing habits and financial knowledge.  The survey found a whopping 85% of Gen Zs started saving before the age of 22, while just 41% of millennials did the same. It also appears that younger Singaporeans have more determination when it comes to budgeting, as 65% of Gen…

Collectius, a credit management servicing company, will launch a US$60 million regional investment platform with IFC, a member of the World Bank Group who has also become a minority equity shareholder in the company. The platform is solely dedicated to acquiring and resolving unsecured debt in Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand and soon Vietnam. The new initiative is IFC’s first in Asia and aims to sustain the financial stability of the economy by supporting regional banks to strengthen their balance sheets by outsourcing the management of their NPLs, assisting debtors with their credit requirements and rehabilitating the debtor’s financial position.…

Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) has partnered with vertical payments company Flywire to offer a fully integrated, digital payment platform for their international students. The payee can simply choose their preferred payment method either through bank transfer, credit card or e-wallet, in their local currency, which is translated at competitive exchange rates – minimising unnecessary bank charges and delays. Users will also have access to multilingual customer service 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with multiple channels of communication. NTU Singapore has been embarking on a digital transformation of its administration since 2018 to meet the university’s…

SWIFT announced that over the next 2 years and beyond, it will continually enhance its payments and securities platform as part of a new strategy approved by its Board. The digital platform will use APIs and cloud technology to provide a set of common processing services that banks have historically invested in individually, saving the industry time and money. New and extensive data capabilities will enable the pre-validation of essential data, fraud detection, data analytics, transaction tracking and exception case management. In payments, financial institutions will be able to expand offerings to businesses and consumers and provide better end-customer experience.…

The pioneer batch of 25 students from the NUS-FinTechSG Programme, jointly developed by the NUS FinTech Lab and Strategic Technology Management Institute (STMI) graduated. All of the Singaporean students in the pioneer batch received either full-time positions or traineeships with partnering companies such as DBS and UBS. The program was launched on 6 July 2020 to nurture Singapore’s next generation of fintech talents and full-stack developers. The students graduated in a virtual ceremony after undergoing a structured two-month intensive full-time course on the fundamentals of financial services technology and business. Students enrolled in the program may choose to join full-time…

The Bank of Thailand (BOT) launched a new platform to issue government savings bond using blockchain technology with its DLT Scripless Bond Project. It is said that fifty billion Baht (approximately US$1.6 billion) of government savings bonds have been sold out in a week. The new infrastructure successfully went live by supporting government savings bonds, “1 Baht Bond” and “Moving Forward”. It is a collaborative effort among eight institutions including Bangkok Bank, Krungthai Bank, Kasikorn Bank, and Siam Commercial Bank among other industry players. In the next phase, the infrastructure will expand to support different types of government bonds, both…

Thailand’s Standard Chartered completed its first cross-bank Letter of Credit (LC) transaction between Vietnam and Thailand conducted over blockchain between Vietnam and Thailand. The transaction was done in partnership with Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the Bank for Investment and Development of Vietnam (BIDV). It also marks the completion of ADB’s first credit guarantee using distributed ledger technology. The transaction was completed over Contour’s network, a blockchain-based open industry platform focused on digitising trade finance, and involved a US$50,000 shipment. ADB’s Head of Trade & Supply Chain Finance Steven Beck, said: “The coronavirus pandemic has shown that it is essential…

Since 2015, foreign investment into Southeast Asia’s fintech companies has grown seven times, according to The Future of Fintech in Southeast Asia report by Dealroom, Finch Capital and MDI Ventures. Foreign investors’ surging participation in the Southeast Asian fintech sector showcases that the region is emerging as the “fintech battleground” for financial institutions and established players, the report says. Some of the most active investors from outside of the region include Tencent, Ant Financial, Accel, Sequoia, SoftBank and Warburg Pincus. In Southeast Asia, fintech is the largest venture capital investment category by number of backed startups with 484 ventures, ahead…