Author: Fintech News Singapore

Climate Impact X (CIX), a global carbon exchange and marketplace, has announced the launch of its Project Marketplace, a digital platform for businesses and carbon project suppliers to list, discover, compare, buy and retire quality carbon credits. It aims to accelerate the corporate sector’s ability to take climate action through the provision of verified carbon projects. The marketplace will enable businesses of all sizes to participate in the voluntary carbon market, by actively lowering barriers for companies to access quality credits easily. The platform is designed for seamless user experience such as shortened purchase journeys and one-click retirement and transfers.…

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has granted in-principle approval to Digital Treasures Center (DTC), a payment company based on distributed ledger technology. With a license under the Payment Services Act to offer Digital Payment Token services, DTC will be able to provide fiat-to-crypto pairing. This allows merchants to accept cryptocurrencies—including Bitcoin, Ethereum and Tether—and convert them into fiat including SGD and USD. Once DTC has fulfilled all the criteria listed under the approval, the company will be able to offer account issuance, merchant acquisition, domestic money transfer, cross-border money transfer, e-money issuance as well as digital payment token services.…

Passwords have been around for decades, having first been introduced back in the 1960s as a concept of authentication to cybersecurity. Since then, technology has evolved, consumer behavior has changed, and the cyber threat landscape has morphed into a complex ecosystem where attacks are becoming more sophisticated and rampant. Although passwords have their flaws, including poor customer experience, and are prone to attacks such as credential stuffing, phishing, social engineering, and brute force attacks, financial institutions are reluctant to get rid of them. This is unlike tech giants including Google and Microsoft which have been fervent believers in the passwordless…

Treehouse, a Web3 company transforming on-chain data into meaningful metrics to help decentralised finance (DeFi) investors make informed financial decisions, announced an US$18 million seed round raise. An undisclosed investor led the round with participation from strategic investors, including Lightspeed Venture Partners, Binance, MassMutual Ventures, Mirana Ventures, Global Founders Capital, Jump Capital, GSR, Wintermute, Do Kwon of Terraform Labs, senior executives from SoftBank Vision Fund, and more. Founded 11 months ago, Treehouse is building the infrastructure required to enable everyday people to fully harness financial products and services made possible by DeFi. Harvest, the company’s flagship product, indexes blockchains and…

Southeast Asian SME digital financing platform Funding Societies has announced its Employee Stock Option Plan (ESOP) buyback for existing and former employees worth US$16 million (RM67 million). This is Funding Societies’ fourth ESOP buyback where the previous one saw its employees and company alumni cashing out US$3.5 million (RM14.7 million) worth of shares. Under the buyback scheme, all eligible former and current employees would have a right to sell their shares at no discount to the Series C+ preference share price to incoming investors, as compared to the customary 20% discount in industry. Employees may also choose to keep their…

Cryptocurrency platform Hodlnaut announced that it has received in-principle approvals from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to be a Major Payment Institution License under the Payment Services Act. Hodlnaut currently offers two digital payment tokens (DPT) services, namely its borrowing and lending services as well as Token Swap feature. Currently, MAS is only regulating Hodlnaut’s DPT Token Swap feature, and not its DPT borrowing and lending services. Hodlnaut said that it will continue working towards meeting MAS’ requirements to secure a full license. MAS has so far granted four full licenses to Australian cryptocurrency exchange Independent Reserve, DBS Vickers which is…

STACS (Hashstacs), a blockchain-based fintech firm focused on Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG), has announced the launch of its full suite of ESG solutions. The full suite of ESG solutions – ESGpedia, Vetta smart contract platform, and ESG Playbooks – aims to enable effective sustainable finance. This follows STACS’ partnership announcement with the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) for Project Greenprint last November. STACS’ flagship blockchain-powered registry, ESGpedia, will serve as the Greenprint ESG Registry. ESGpedia is an industry-wide library that provides financial institutions, corporates, and regulatory authorities a single point of access to quality ESG certifications and data of…

Outdated yet ubiquitous, passwords are inconvenient, risky, and costly for banks to maintain. So what’s the best way for banks to modernize authentication with secure and user-friendly password-less technologies? From best practices to the latest technologies, this webinar will explore what it will take for us to get from here to a passwordless world. The evolution of passwords and authentication Best practices for deploying password-less solutions that satisfy customer needs A range of authentication technologies that support true password-less login Panelists: Mhel T. Plabasan, Director, Technology Risk and Innovation Supervision Department, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Will Tully, Regional Head Of…

Pace Enterprise, a Singaporean Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) company, has announced a regional partnership with ZALORA. Pace is currently available to Zalora customers in Singapore and Malaysia. The partnership gives ZALORA shoppers the option to split their transactions into three interest-free installments at checkout. To make a purchase, consumers will need to select Pace at the Zalora website or mobile webpage during checkout and will be directed to the Pace website to complete the payment. Payment via Zalora app will also be available later this year. New Pace users will need to register for a new account while existing…

Revolut has eased many of the requirements needed to set up an account for all refugees regardless of nationality, fleeing Ukraine following the Russian invasion. The company has also done away with a number of FX and top-up fees to ensure these displaced individuals have quick and easy access to their money Revolut is enabling them to access their money by linking the app to their Ukrainian bank account, opening a corridor to facilitate access to money. Once the account has been set up, users can then immediately begin topping up their account in a variety of currencies. The standard…

KASIKORN Business-Technology Group (KBTG) announced that it has become a Consortium Research Lab Member at the MIT Media Lab to conduct frontier tech research for next-generation financial services. The MIT Media Lab is an academic research institute where US domestic and international corporations and organisations collaborate to conduct interdisciplinary research for “creating a better future.” It applies a consortium model to promote active discussion, information, and research projects with faculty, researchers, students, and external collaborators. KBTG said that it will also be the first Thailand-based company to send its researcher to the MIT Media Lab. Through this collaborative effort, KBTG…

In Southeast Asia, Indonesia is fast becoming a fintech powerhouse as investors continue to pour money into young, innovative startups seeking to tap into the country’s massive population of underbanked. In the first nine months of 2021, Indonesian fintech companies raised a total of US$904 million in funding, representing 26% of total fintech funding across ASEAN and making Indonesia the country that raised the second largest sum for the year, according to a report by UOB, PwC Singapore and the Singapore Fintech Association. With 785 fintech companies, Indonesia has the region’s second biggest fintech industry. 94 of these ventures were…

Paxos, a regulated blockchain infrastructure platform, announced it has received in-principle approval from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to operate digital payments token services under the Payment Services Act. With this license, Paxos is now able to offer its digital asset and blockchain products and services to customers domiciled in Singapore. The license will also help Paxos to support its current partners in expanding their services into Asia. MAS’ in-principle approval follows Paxos’ success in securing the limited purpose trust charter for digital assets from the New York Department of Financial Services in 2015. The regulator has so far…

Over the past year, organisations in Asia have embraced the zero trust security framework at a fast pace, recognising the need to upgrade their IT security strategy to address the ongoing digital shift, according to a new survey by Okta, a publicly traded identity and access management firm. Zero trust is a security model that requires all users to be authenticated, authorised, and continuously validated for security configuration before being granted or keeping access to applications and data. It’s a framework that’s particularly relevant today as it addresses modern challenges relating to securing remote workers, hybrid cloud environments, and emerging…

Southeast Asian SME digital financing platform Funding Societies has selected Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) provider MatchMove to offer virtual card solutions to their Micro, Small, and Medium-size enterprises (MSME) clients in addition to their approved loans at affordable interest rates. The M-JIT™ solution is tailored to allow Funding Societies to decide on the real-time funding requests originating on the MatchMove platform with the convenience of receiving and responding to these requests on their own platform. This will eliminate any under or over-funding issues to manage their client’s account balances. Funding Societies looks to provide MSMEs in Singapore with a comprehensive suite of…

MUFG Bank announced that it plans to invest US$300 million in middle- to late-stage Indian startups through the new MUFG Ganesha Fund. In the future, MUFG said that it will aim to leverage its group strengths to provide a wide range of financial services to its portfolio companies. MUFG has pursued initiatives in the region since positioning the capture of Asian growth, responding to the digital shift, and contributing to environmental and social issues are priority strategies. This includes efforts such as building a business platform through investments in partner banks and supporting startups via Mars Growth Capital, a joint…

Regional insurtech firm Igloo announced that it has raised US$19 million in Series B funding round and promoted Raunak Mehta as its new Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO). The round was led by Cathay Innovation with participation from ACA and other existing investors including Openspace, bringing Igloo’s total funds raised to over US$36 million. With its Series B raise, Igloo plans to drive product innovation and will continue to invest in reinforcing its full-stack capabilities, along with innovating its dynamic risk assessment and AI-powered claims assessment tools. Additionally, the funds will also be used to focus on acquiring intermediary…

Silent Eight, a Singaporean regtech startup leveraging artificial intelligence (AI), announced the closing of a US$40 million Series B funding round, bringing its total funds raised to US$55 million. This round brings the firm’s total valuation to four times its previous value in October 2020. The company said that in that time revenue has grown sixfold and headcount has tripled. The round was led by TYH Ventures who will have its Managing Partner Kolya Miller join Silent Eight’s board. The company also welcomed its client HSBC Ventures who will have its representative Tom Caine joining its board. OTB Ventures, Wavemaker…

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) believes that there is no pressing need for the issuance of a digital Sing dollar even though the country is ready for it, according to Lawrence Wong, Deputy Chairman of MAS and Minister for Finance during a parliamentary meeting. MAS has been among the central banks at the forefront of experiments with central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), especially wholesale CBDCs, starting over five years ago. It has been actively engaged in the international discourse on CBDCs among policymakers, industry, and academia. Several other central banks have taken the same view for now, such as…

Sygnum, the digital asset technology group based in Singapore and Switzerland, has received in-principle approvals from the Monetary Authority of Singapore to expand its digital asset product offerings. The company already has an existing Capital Markets Services (CMS) license and will now be able to conduct three additional regulated activities under it. Upon obtaining full approval to conduct the additional activities, Sygnum will be able to provide asset managers and Web3 players in Singapore a fully-regulated capital raising solution covering the entire value chain. Sygnum will be able to provide corporate finance advisory services to companies seeking to raise capital.…