Computer technology giant Oracle is boosting its cloud business in Asia. Oracle’s investment in Singapore involves the opening of the Oracle Cloud Singapore Region, bringing the total of the firm’s cloud regions globally to 33. The new cloud region will be serving the broader Southeast Asian region where demand for enterprise cloud services has picked up, the company said. Oracle has also committed US$3 million worth of Oracle Cloud credits and free trainings to startups in the city-state to boost traction, and will be providing free Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) training and certifications until March 31, 2022. OCI is Oracle’s next-generation…
Author: Fintech News Singapore
Author
Read More
In a matter of weeks, COVID-19 forced radical changes in customer behaviour, moving significant portions of the economy online and increasing customers’ comfort and willingness to engage digitally. It has dramatically accelerated the rate of digital adoption in financial services across the Asia Pacific and forced new ways of working. Now that most banks and financial services providers have completed their urgent cloud projects and adjusted to the “COVID economy,” a new challenge is surfacing – the impending security and compliance reckoning resulting from all of this rapid and forced digital transformation. According to IDC, chief experience officers (CXOs) cite…
Sleek, a platform providing incorporation and accounting services for SMEs and entrepreneurs, announced it has secured US$14 million in a Series A funding round led by White Star Capital and Jungle Ventures, bringing its total funds raised to US$24 million. The company said that it will use the fresh funds to bolster tech and product development, hiring, and expand presence in existing markets and enter new ones. Sleek aims to use proceeds to catalyse its global growth, particularly in Europe, where it has announced the acquisition of Ltd Companies involved in UK incorporation management for an undisclosed sum. Ltd Companies…
Singaporean cryptocurrency platform Coinhako has been issued an in-principle approval from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to provide digital payment token services under the Payment Services Act (PSA) as a major payment institution. Coinhako said that it is currently working through the conditions of its in-principle approval with a view towards meeting MAS’ requirements to receive the full license. MAS has so far granted three full licenses to Australian cryptocurrency exchange Independent Reserve, DBS Vickers which is the brokerage arm of DBS Bank, and QR code payment solution provider FOMO Pay. Coinhako offers both fiat-to-crypto and crypto-to-crypto trading services…
There is “no pressing need” for a retail central bank digital currency (CBDC) in Singapore at this point in time, but market shifts and changing customer expectations are nevertheless forcing the central bank to prepare for a possible issuance in the future, an assessment by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) says. The paper, titled A Retail Central Bank Digital Currency: Economic Considerations in the Singapore Context, looks at what a retail CBDC could look like in the city-state, exploring its potential implications for financial stability and monetary policy. According to the paper, retail payments in Singapore are already competitive,…
The SFF Global FinTech Awards brings together the Fintech Awards previously presented separately by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and the Singapore Fintech Association (SFA) at the Singapore Fintech Festival. The theme for this year’s Awards is “Emerging from a pandemic, the road to recovery”. The 49 winners across 12 award categories were selected from a total of 298 submissions. The winners were chosen by an international panel comprising industry experts across multiple domains. The top 3 winners will take home S$150,000, S$100,000, and S$50,000 respectively. The winners for the SFF Global Fintech Awards 2021 presented by MAS are:…
The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and the Singapore Fintech Association (SFA) announced the award winners of the Global Fintech Hackcelerator at the Singapore Fintech Festival. The theme for this year’s Global Fintech Hackcelerator is “Harnessing Technology to Power Green Finance”. The winners were selected at Demo Day, held during SFF on 8 November 2021, where 20 finalists pitched their innovations to an international industry panel. The top three winners will receive S$50,000 each in prize money. Descartes Insurance Asia Solution’s Name: Descartes’ Parametric Insurance Country: France Solution’s Description: Descartes Insurance’s winning solution processes data from satellite imagery, IoT, radars…
The 6th edition of the Singapore Fintech Festival (SFF) took place this week as a hybrid event combining both digital and physical elements aimed at bringing together the largest crowd of fintech experts, policymakers and key stakeholders. The week-long SFF 2021 featured more than 350 sessions, over 700 speakers, over 260 exhibitors, and 14 international pavilions. The event was streamed ‘live’ to over 60,000 participants, including representation from more than 7,000 companies, government agencies, educational institutions and organizations from over 130 countries. Like previous years, SFF 2021 was the opportunity for some of the world’s largest tech firms, banks, fintech…
Sparrow, a digital assets trading platform headquartered in Singapore, has raised US$4.4 million in Series A funding led by Gain Loyal, an investment company focusing on real estate investments in Asia. The company intends to use the funds to create more innovative solutions and accelerate digitalisation to enhance the quality of its platform in terms of security, user experience, and compliance. Sparrow also aims to attract talent in risk management, trading, technology, and operational excellence. Additionally, Sparrow will also improve its KYC, AML, and CFT regulatory framework and continue to grow its workforce across all its functions. As of October…
Blockchain Association Singapore (BAS) and the National Trades Union Congress’ U Care Fund (NTUC-U Care Fund) jointly hosted the Blockchain for Good Event Night 2021 to recognise those who have contributed to the nation’s first Non-Fungible Token (NFT) charity auction. The NFT charity auction took place between 4 -10 October 2021. The ‘Blockchain for Good’ inaugural charity auction raised a total of S$401,211 from BAS corporate members and the general public for the NTUC U-Care Fund, exceeding the original target of S$250,000. The event was graced by the Guest-of-Honour, Tan Chuan-Jin, Speaker of Parliament, who also witnessed a Memorandum of…
Network for Electronic Transfers (NETS) announced that Sunny Quek and Melvyn Low have been appointed to its Board of Directors, effective 1st November 2021 onwards. Sunny Quek, who is OCBC’s Head of Consumer Financial Services, succeeds Ching Wei Hong, the Deputy President of OCBC, Chairman of Bank of Singapore and OCBC Securities, as an OCBC representative to the NETS Board. Ching who recently stepped down as NETS’ Chairman, had earlier announced that he would retire from OCBC Bank at the end of September after 22 years of service. With over two decades of banking experience, Quek joined OCBC in 2012,…
The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has announced the winners of the Global Central Bank Digital Currency Challenge (Global CBDC Challenge) at the Fintech Awards Ceremony of the Singapore Fintech Festival (SFF). Selected from 15 finalists, the three top winners each received a cash prize of S$50,000. The challenge was held in partnership with the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, Asian Development Bank, United Nations Capital Development Fund, United Nations High Commission for Refugees, United Nations Development Programme, and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. The challenge concludes the first phase of MAS’ study to explore possible retail CBDC solutions…
Singapore’s Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and the Financial Services Regulatory Authority (FSRA) of Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM) have successfully concluded the world’s first cross-border digital trade financing pilot of its kind. Commercial partners DBS Bank, Emirates NBD and Standard Chartered also collaborated for the pilot. IMDA developed TradeTrust as an interoperable framework that provides proof of authenticity, origin and ownership of digital documents used in trade finance. This enables trading counterparties and transacting banks to validate documents digitally and securely even when they are on different trade finance platforms, and allows such…
DBS Digital Exchange (DDEx) announced that it had recorded over S$600 million in digital assets under custody as at the end of October, triple the amount recorded in the previous month. The exchange has since witnessed robust growth since it went operational 24/7 in August this year. In the two full months since, DDEx recorded trading volumes surpassing the total trading volume of the first eight months of the year by 40%. DDEx added that it has also seen a growing number of corporate and institutional customers among its participants. Among the corporate and institutional customers onboarded to DDEx are…
Huobi Global, a global blockchain asset financial services provider, announced that it will no longer be able to offer services to Singaporean users. The company cited the country’s strict regulations as a reason and will be closing the accounts of all Singapore-based users on 31st March 2022. Huobi added that access to its services will also be gradually phased out prior to that and urged its Singapore users to close out all their active positions and withdraw all their digital assets by then. The crypto exchange had to similarly wind down its operations in China following major crackdowns from the…
The continued proliferation of digital technologies and the ongoing shift to online channels have heralded a new age of financial crime, one marked by undefined geographies and increased sophistication of attacks. In light of this new reality, professionals in the financial crime space need to start operating under an innovation imperative, top risk and security specialists representing Standard Chartered, paytech unicorn Nium and fraud prevention firm GBG said during a recent Fintech Fireside Asia virtual panel discussion. “We are in an era with very smart technology. This is an enabler for fraudsters to increase the level of sophistication that they…
Fintech funding in ASEAN has more than tripled to a record high of US$3.5 billion in 2021 from 2020, with Singapore retaining the top spot thanks to its mega-rounds. According to the “Fintech in ASEAN 2021: Digital Takes Flight” report by UOB, PwC Singapore and the Singapore Fintech Association (SFA), the rebound in fintech funding was driven by 167 deals including 13 mega-rounds, which accounted for US$2 billion of the total funding. Most investors showed strong interest in late-stage fintech firms which secured 10 out of 13 mega-rounds this year. This trend signals a shift in the strategy of investors…
The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has announced the three winners of the inaugural Global Veritas Challenge 2021 where each of them received a cash prize of S$50,000. The winners, selected from a pool of ten finalists, successfully addressed key challenges in validating the fairness of artificial intelligence (AI) solutions for specific banking use cases. This year’s challenge focused on four use cases, namely (i) product marketing; (ii) risk, compliance and fraud monitoring; (iii) loan origination and know-your-customer (KYC); and (iv) credit scoring and profiling. The finalists came from six countries in Asia, North America and Europe and were shortlisted…
Cryptocurrencies have performed poorly as a medium of exchange, a store of value, or a unit of account said Ravi Menon, the Managing Director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) during a speech at the Singapore Fintech Festival today. Ravi firmly believed that cryptocurrencies are not comparable to money and instead preferred to call them by their more accurate technical name; crypto tokens. “We define tokens that are used for payments purposes as digital payment tokens, and entities which provide services related to such tokens in Singapore are subject to licensing and supervision by MAS, primarily for money laundering…
The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) announced that it will form partnerships to pilot four digital platforms under Project Greenprint, to address the financial sector’s needs for quality data on sustainability. Project Greenprint was launched in December 2020 and one of the key challenges faced in sustainability financing is the difficulty in accessing high quality, consistent and granular sustainability data. Addressing these data gaps will enable financial institutions to direct capital towards sustainability projects in a more scalable way, effectively monitor their sustainability commitments, and quantify the risks and real-world impact of their portfolios. Since the announcement of Project Greenprint…