Blockchain technology, one of the most discussed technologies of the past couple of years, is set to substantially transform the traceability landscape and stakeholder behavior along the value chain in fisheries and aquaculture, according to a new report by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. In a paper titled Blockchain Application in Seafood Value Chains, the FAO provides an introduction to blockchain, and explores how the technology can be used in seafood value chains by analyzing seven initiatives. According to the study, blockchain technology, with its inherent characteristics of immutability, security, and decentralization, together with its…
Author: Fintech News Singapore
Author
Read More
Crypto.com announced that it has begun shipping its MCO Visa Cards to 31 countries in Europe, they claim that this makes them the only crypto card provider offering cards in Asia, EU, and the United States. Crypto.com’s MCO Visa card was first launched in Singapore in 2018. Since then the market for crypto cards has accelerated, as a wide range of companies have expanded their offerings or released cards of their own. Starting today, Crypto.com is now shipping its cards to 31 markets in Europe, including all 27 EU member states, an addressable market of nearly 530 million people. Kris…
Pand.ai announced today that it has developed a chatbot for CIMB Singapore to help business owners with their queries on COVID-19 financial schemes offered by the bank. CIMB said that it is the first bank in Singapore to have developed a chatbot specifically for business owners seeking financial relief. Dubbed as EVA, it is an AI that’s powered by Natural Language Processing and Named Entity Recognition, and is said to be able to understand the subtler semantics of a human being. At the same time, they claim it will accurately pick up the topic that the user is asking for.…
Multi-asset investment platform eToro has announced that it will extend its commission-free stocks offering to clients in Asia-Pacific, effective immediately. The zero-commission offering for Asia Pacific clients applies to all stocks on its platform that are traded on the Nasdaq and NYSE exchanges. The company believes this makes eToro the first platform to offer commission-free stocks and fractional shares globally (available to users in over 100 countries). Yoni Assia, Co-Founder and CEO of eToro, said: “eToro was founded with the goal of opening up financial markets to all. We hope that by offering commission-free investing for the most frequently bought…
Data science, which involves developing methods of recording, storing and analyzing data to extract useful information and gain insights, has created a drastic change in the financial services industry. Considered as the core of fintech, data science and its allies in the form of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and big data, have brought the sector to the next level, with now applications in areas including risk evaluation, fraud detection, payments and transaction records, as well as asset management. In risk evaluation, data science allows fintech companies to assemble faster and more accurate credit evaluation processes; in fraud prevention,…
Singapore based financial technology start-up Spark Systems announces the successful completion of the first close of Series BB funding round raising a total of S$15m (US$10.5m) from two Tier 1 global banks and a South East Asia focused investment firm. Spark Systems describes themselves as builders of the next-generation high speed trading platforms that are resilient, ultra-low latency and cost efficient. Incoming investors are Citi and HSBC as well as OSK Ventures. They will join the existing investor base; Vickers Venture, Dymon Asia Ventures, Dymon Asia Capital, Jubilee Capital, FengHe and Goldman Sachs, a leading global investment banking, securities and…
Singapore-based deep-tech company Dathena, a provider AI-powered data protection and privacy management for global enterprises, today announced that they have closed a $12 million Series A round led by Jungle Ventures, with the participation of Caphorn and SEEDS Capital, an investment arm of Enterprise Singapore which is the government agency championing enterprise development. Existing investors Cerracap Ventures and MS&AD Ventures also participated in the round. Following the opening of Dathena’s U.S. headquarters in New York City, the funding round sets the stage for the tech pioneer’s continuing global expansion. More than 200,000 users and a multitude of enterprise clients worldwide…
The Libra Association, an independent member organization, announced the addition of three new members, Temasek, Paradigm and Slow Ventures. Libra is Facebook’s grand ambition in creating global payment system and financial infrastructure using digital currencies. In their media statement they stated that Temasek brings a differentiated position as an Asia-focused investors — with its forward looking view they further added that Temasek sees innovative technologies such as blockchain as transformative enablers of growth. Meanwhile, Paradigm and Slow Ventures add to the Association’s membership of investment funds, whose technological prowess and commitment to developing the blockchain and digital assets market segment…
The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), Singapore FinTech Association (SFA), AMTD Group and AMTD Foundation (collectively, AMTD) today announced the launch of a S$6 million MAS-SFA-AMTD FinTech Solidarity Grant (the Grant) to support Singapore-based FinTech firms amid the challenging business climate caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The Grant will help FinTech firms maintain their operations, and enable them to continue to innovate and grow. The Grant complements the S$125 million support package announced by MAS on 8 April 2020 to sustain and strengthen capabilities in the financial services and FinTech sectors. AMTD has provided an initial S$2 million to support…
CXA, an employee ecosystem platform for better health, wealth and wellness choices, announced today that it has raised fresh funding from Humanica, a Thai-based HR solutions provider, and HSBC Life, an indirect wholly-owned subsidiary of HSBC. With this latest capital injection, Humanica, in particular, has doubled its investment in CXA as a continuation of last year’s convertible note bridge financing. CXA achieved revenue growth of 50 percent in 2019 and the start-up had previously raised US$58 million in total funding from Series A, Series B, and a convertible note round in 2015, 2017 and 2019, respectively. In addition to the…
Revolut, has bolstered its leadership team in Singapore with the appointment of a Chief Executive Officer, Chief Compliance Officer and Head of Growth. This comes after it announced Martin Gilbert’s appointment as Chairman of its Board, who sat on the MAS International Advisory Panel until early 2020. Revolut has now appointed James Shanahan as Chief Executive Officer, responsible for growing Revolut’s local business and expanding into wider Asian markets. James joined Revolut in March 2020 and was previously Chief of Staff for Railsbank Technologies in South East Asia and Chief Operating Officer for Singlife. He has more than 25 years…
Validus, a SME financing platform that is also present in Indonesia (Batumbu) and Vietnam (Validus Vietnam), has successfully raised over US$14 million, with US$20 million in committed capital in its ongoing Series B+ funding round co-led by Vertex Growth Fund (Vertex Growth) and Kuok Group’s Orion Fund managed by K3 Venture Partners. They join Validus’ stable of investors, including FMO (Netherlands’ public-private development bank), Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia and India, Openspace Ventures, Thailand’s AddVentures (Siam Cement Group) and Vietnam’s VinaCapital Ventures who return to fund and support the company in this latest round. Founded in 2015 and headquartered in Singapore,…
COVID-19 is continuing to spread around the world, causing deaths and major disruption to the global economy. To date, more than 251,000 people have unfortunately succumbed to the virus and the number of confirmed cases has exceeded 3.5 million, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. The COVID-19 pandemic and necessary protection measures put in place are also severely impacting economic activity, with the International Monetary Fund projecting a sharp 3% contraction of the global economy in 2020. In the live events space, the health crisis has caused many highly-anticipated gatherings around the world to be cancelled or postponed…
63% of banking customers in Asia-Pacific (APAC) are likely to use digital banking services offered by neobanks and challenger banks by 2025, highlighting the urgency for banks to innovate, according to the Fintech and Digital Banking 2025 report by Backbase and IDC. The report, released on April 29, found that the region is expected to see 100 new financial institutions, including pureplay digital banks, payment banks, and financial aggregators, emerge by 2025, a trend ushered in by liberalization of several markets and the issuance of new banking licenses. The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) is set to issue five digital…
What do you know about the businesses that you are working with? Your partners, clients, suppliers? How can you make sure that they are real companies but not shell companies? Where do they get money from? Where does their money go? What are the financial risks of doing business with them? In order to answer those questions Know Your Business (KYB) practice was created. What’s KYB? KYB is a procedure that is a part of due diligence performed on all businesses that your company has a relationship with. Performing such control is mandatory for financial institutions, credit institutions, auditors, external…
The COVID-19 health crisis and the related protection measures put in place have critically impacted economic activity, with the International Monetary Funding (IMF) projecting a contraction of the global economy by 3% in 2020 as a result of the pandemic – much worse than during the 2008-2009 crisis. The current climate has particularly stopped the music for the venture capital (VC) ecosystem, startups and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which have been at the front line of the battle and felt the repercussions of the pandemic the most. In these dire and uncertain times, businesses of all sizes and from…
In Asia Pacific (APAC), adoption of fintech applications including digital wallets is booming, according to a new study by Rapyd, a global Fintech as a Service company. Rapyd, which surveyed 3,500 online consumers in APAC in March and April 2020, found that consumers across the region are rapidly embracing mobile fintech apps, with 77.6% of Indians, 77% of Malaysians, 70% of Indonesians, and 66% of Thai, having used a digital wallet app over the past month. Breaking down the different categories, the research found that digital wallets are particularly taking off for personal transactions, such as personal repayments from family…
Despite the clear impact of COVID-19 on InsurTech investment worldwide during Q1, insurtechs saw a decline in funds raised compared to 2019. Insurtechs raised a total of US$912 million during the first three months of 2020, according to the new Quarterly InsurTech Briefing from Willis Towers Watson, a global advisory, broking and solutions company. Deal count, at 96, was up 28% over Q4 2019, 10% more than the first quarter of that year. It is the highest number of investment rounds by transactional volume ever recorded by the Quarterly InsurTech Briefing. Overall total funding was down by 54%, however, reflecting…
Razer’s financial technology arm, Razer Fintech, is launching its first-ever digital hackathon in Singapore, scheduled for 15 May 2020 to 17 May 2020, where Razer Fintech will continue to support and resolve issues faced by the youth and local startups due to the COVID-19 crisis. These objectives are in line with the US$50 million COVID-19 Support Fund announced by Razer earlier. The Razer Fintech Digital Hackathon will encourage Singapore tertiary students, young professionals, and the start-up community to think outside the box and address critical financial challenges that have been exacerbated by COVID-19. Winning participants will have the opportunity to…
The Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore (IRAS) released on April 17 an e-Tax Guide on the income tax treatment of transactions involving digital tokens, as well as initial coin offerings (ICOs). The guide focuses on three types of digital tokens, namely payment tokens, utility tokens and security tokens, and further clarifies the tax treatment of tokens received in unconventional ways such as via airdrops or hard forks. Tax treatment for digital tokens According to the guide, transactions involving payment tokens are regarded as barter trades. Recipients of payment tokens are taxed on the value of the underlying goods provided or…