Author: Fintech News Singapore

Insurtech firm Igloo announced that it has appointed Wilson Tseng as its new Chief Business Officer. Tseng will be responsible for driving Igloo’s commercial strategy, expanding partnerships with business and insurer partners, as well as identifying and developing new growth opportunities and revenue streams. He will work closely with Igloo’s commercial teams across Malaysia, Vietnam, the Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia. Additionally, he will work closely with product, engineering, and insurance teams to facilitate new initiatives, products, and services across all markets and product lines. Tseng will be reporting to Raunak Mehta who was recently promoted as Igloo’s Co-founder and Chief…

Network for Electronic Transfers (NETS), Singapore’s leading payment services group, announced that it will be supporting local banks to pilot loan solutions targeting small and mid-size enterprises (SMEs) looking to expand their business or address any unplanned cash flow needs. Payment-related data for participating SME merchants is available from NETS to local banks, allowing the loan application to be more efficient and timely. Approval time can also be shortened whilst allowing banks to have more insight to offer relevant financing solutions to NETS’ SME merchants. The financing solution aims to provide flexible repayment plans and quick approvals to support these…

Payment giant Visa has launched the Visa Creator Programme, an initiative that aims to help digital-first artists, musicians, fashion designers, and filmmakers accelerate their small business through non-fungible tokens (NFTs). The Visa Creator Programme is geared towards entrepreneurs working in art, music, fashion and film who are serious about incorporating NFTs into their business model, whether they’ve just minted their first NFT or have several successful drops under their belt. Each cycle of the programme will support a selected group of entrepreneurs looking to deepen their understanding of the technology and platforms underpinning NFT commerce. Selected creators will join a…

Pine Labs, an Indian merchant commerce platform, announced a new investment of US$50 million from Vitruvian Partners, a London-headquartered international investment firm. According to a report by the Economic Times, this new round of funding has pushed Pine Labs’ valuation to about US$5 billion. The company had previously raised US$600 million from the likes of Sequoia Capital, Temasek Holdings, PayPal and Mastercard amongst other leading global investors ahead of its planned IPO that was initially scheduled for March this year. However, Pine Labs has decided to postpone its plans for an IPO to the second half of this year due…

Pace Enterprise (Pace), a BNPL operator founded in 2021, announced today that is has signed an agreement to aqcuire the assets of Rely a competing fintech startup offering BNPL services for an undisclosed sum. This news follows Pace’s US$ 40 million Series A fundraising round in November 2021. The Rely team will be working with all existing merchants to transition them to Pace’s merchant platforms. As part of this acquisition, all Rely employees will take on new roles at Pace aligned to their previous capacities. Founded by Hizam Ismail, Chief Executive Officer, Mohamed Abbas, Chief Revenue Officer, and Prakash Raja,…

Financial services software and cloud solutions provider Finastra’s research found that APAC’s appetite for Banking as a Service (BaaS) exceeds that of EMEA and the Americas. The report found that 88% of senior executives across APAC in a number of sectors (including banking, healthcare, retail and technology) said they are already implementing BaaS solutions or are planning to, compared with 80% in EMEA and 87% in the Americas. The research “Banking as a Service: Outlook 2022 | Paving the way for Embedded Finance” canvassed the opinions of 1,600 senior industry executives, exploring the opportunities presented by Banking as a Service…

Data technology provider InterSystems has launched a suite of new solutions that will help financial institutions become more agile, make faster, more informed decisions, and respond better to changing customer expectations. The Business 360, Customer 360, Institutional Client 360, and Cloud Fintech Gateway solutions have been developed to meet the varying needs of different audiences within the financial services ecosystem. This includes large and mid-tier financial services organisations, software vendors and fintechs. The solutions use next-generation data management technology and a new architectural approach known as a smart data fabric. They provide financial services organisations with a real-time, consistent view…

This past year has been flooded with news of funding rounds and product launches relating to earned wage access (EWA) in what appears to have become one of the hottest topics in the fintech world right now. EWA, also referred to as early payday, is a financial service offered to employees, mostly low-wage and hourly workers, providing them access to their accrued wages before the end of their payroll cycle. These solutions target people who have difficulties making ends meet between paychecks, providing them with an alternative to payday loans which have been widely criticized as predatory for charging excessive…

Carbonplace, the new carbon credit settlement platform, announced that it has formed a partnership with global carbon marketplace and exchange, Climate Impact X (CIX). They have teamed up for a pilot to lower entry barriers for organisations seeking high-quality carbon credits on the voluntary carbon market while delivering a seamless experience for customers to discover, compare, buy, and retire credits. This pilot aims to transform the voluntary carbon market by building in the accessibility, trust, and transparency needed to grow at scale and maximise climate impact. The pilot will establish the technical, legal, and operational framework for executing carbon credit…

Digital insurance advisory Sherpa announced it has received a strategic investment from bolttech, an international insurtech unicorn. The sum was not disclosed. This is part of a collaboration to expand the international presence of its digital insurance and protection advisory tool, Sherpa Score. Sherpa Score is a data-driven advisory platform that provides consumers with a highly customised visualisation of their insurance and protection gaps to inform their decision making. Businesses selling insurance can integrate the Sherpa Score platform into their own channels to drive increased engagement and understanding for a better experience for their customers. The Sherpa Score platform will…

Payment technology platform Global Processing Services (GPS) has announced a new partnership with Mastercard, who has also made a strategic investment into the company for an undisclosed sum. The funding was due to GPS’ strong investment in international expansion and product development with an eye on new and fast-growing verticals where adoption continues to rise including digital banks, crypto, BNPL, open banking and cross border payments. Through GPS’ agile cloud-based technology, fintechs can access a diverse and expanding suite of modern open APIs that enable organisations to scale at speed. Additionally, fintechs will also be able to access GPS’s unique…

Singapore-based major payment institution FOMO Pay has entered into a strategic agreement to collaborate with Circle Internet Financial, a global financial technology firm and sole issuer of USD Coin (USDC). FOMO Pay will integrate USDC into its services, allowing its merchant, corporate and financial institution clients to seamlessly convert between USDC and fiat currency. Circle had announced its intention to establish a regional hub in Singapore and its participation in a Lighthouse Project with the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) in November 2021, The initiative aims to demonstrate how digital currencies, open payment systems, and regulation can solve business and…

Businesses are increasingly shifting to open source software solutions to address COVID-19-related challenges and tackle new market demands for quality, speed and as well as an evolving cybersecurity landscape. This is the finding drawn from a survey of nearly 1,300 IT decision makers at medium and large enterprises worldwide conducted by IBM subsidiary and open source software provider Red Hat. The results, which are shared in the 2022 State of Enterprise Open Source report, show a clear improvement in enterprises’ perception and awareness of open source software, which many now view as a superior form of software with more innovation…

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Innovation Hub, the Reserve Bank of Australia, Bank Negara Malaysia, the Monetary Authority of Singapore, and the South African Reserve Bank has developed two prototypes for a shared platform that could enable international settlements using digital currencies issued by multiple central banks (mCBDCs). Led by the Innovation Hub’s Singapore Center, Project Dunbar proved that financial institutions could use CBDCs issued by participating central banks to transact directly with each other on a shared platform. This has the potential to reduce reliance on intermediaries and, correspondingly, the costs and time taken to process cross-border transactions.…

Southeast Asian SME growth financing platform Validus announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire CitiBusiness’ loan portfolio in Singapore. The move is set to bolster Validus’ revenue, customer base, and expand its growing loan book. Validus’ acquisition of the CitiBusiness loan portfolio comes on top of several strategic moves by Validus recently, including the acquisition of KlearCard, a business payments and expense management technology platform. The company has also been expanding its team rapidly in Southeast Asia, with its team growing by over 25% in the past 6 months with majority coming in support of new technology…

The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in financial services is all over the news, with some reports estimating it to be a US$450 billion opportunity. But what’s the real story around what AI can do? Beyond just automating certain processes, AI has the potential to improve accuracy in credit or risk decisioning workflows, encouraging financial inclusion and allowing the underbanked and unbanked access to financial services in ways that were previously unreachable. Over 3 billion people in Asia have no access to formal credit and three of the top ten ‘most unbanked’ countries in the world happen to be located…

Adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) is growing rapidly in the financial services sector, as organizations all seek to benefit from the advantages brought about by the technology, including streamlined processes, task automation and improved customer experience. A new survey conducted by tech firm Nvidia, which polled over 500 financial services professionals, including executives, data scientists, developers, engineers, and IT specialists, from around the world, found that a vast majority of financial services companies are already using AI in some type of way. Across all sectors of financial services, over 75% of companies utilize at least one of the core accelerated…

Stripe, a global payments firm, has announced the launch of Stripe Tax in Singapore. This helps domestic businesses automatically calculate and collect consumption tax, better known as goods and services tax (GST), in Singapore, as well as sales tax, value-added tax (VAT), and GST in over 35 countries for cross border operations. This tells businesses where they need to collect tax, and creates comprehensive reports to make filing tax returns easy. Stripe Tax covers Consumption Tax, Sales Tax, VAT and GST requirements in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong,…

In Singapore, alternative payment methods including buy now, pay later (BNPL) arrangements and digital wallets, are surging in popularity. By 2025, fintech software provider FIS projects that these payment methods will make up half of online payments, with BNPL forecasted to be the fastest-growing option. Between 2021 and 2025, BNPL arrangements are expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 40% and double their share of e-commerce transaction value from 4% to 8%, figures shared in the 2022 Global Payments Report by Worldpay from FIS show. In Singapore, BNPL arrangements have emerged as a popular alternative to…

Payments firm 2C2P announced its regional partnership with hoolah, a Singaporean Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) provider. The partnership enables 2C2P to offer hoolah’s service to merchants in Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong, and extend to new markets through 2022. Through 2C2P’s comprehensive payments platform, merchants can seamlessly provide hoolah’s BNPL payment option at checkout for customers to split purchases into three monthly interest-free repayments. 2C2P and hoolah said that they will collaborate to help merchants boost their order size and reach more customers who favour BNPL payment methods. Aung Kyaw Moe, CEO and Founder of 2C2P said, “This partnership…