Author: Fintech News Singapore

Over 1,000 attendees, comprising investors and FinTech start-ups, turned up at the Singapore FinTech Festival’s Investor Summit or “Deal Day” today, and up to US$2 billion of capital was made available for the start-ups. The Investor Summit was the finale of the four-month long matchmaking programme to provide opportunities for FinTech start-ups to access funding from local and global investors. More than 1,000 FinTech start-ups and 400 investors indicated interest to participate in the process and 525 connections were made among interested parties. The Investor Summit, powered by Ernst & Young (EY), is organised by the Monetary Authority of Singapore…

Last week, the Singapore Fintech Festival, one of the world’s largest gatherings dedicated to fintech, welcomed more than 25,000 participants from across 100 countries for the week-long event, bringing together the world’s policy makers and top financial institutions and fintech entrepreneurs to discuss the state of the global fintech industry. This year’s event was all about strengthening ties with foreign authorities, accelerating innovation, and building a collaborative, thriving fintech landscape. The Singapore Fintech Festival 2017 was the opportunity for many players in the financial services and tech industries to unveil some of their latest, most exciting projects they’ve been working on.…

IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and the ASEAN Bankers Association (ABA), introduced, an industry FinTech sandbox for financial institutions and FinTech firms as part of the ASEAN Financial Innovation Network (AFIN), at the sidelines of the Singapore FinTech Festival. ASEAN Financial Innovation Network (AFIN) aims to support financial services innovation and inclusion in less developed markets within the ASEAN region and to provide a platform for collaboration and innovation for financial institutions and FinTech firms. AFIN will provide an integrated platform for collaboration between ASEAN banks, microfinance institutions, non-banking financial…

Trunomi, a company that enables business to unlock the power of customer data with consent and data rights management, is the winner of the inaugural BakerCREDITS Award, which was presented at this year’s Singapore FinTech Festival. Baker McKenzie is one of the world’s leading legal services provider to fintech and regtech companies, with a focus on helping start-ups and fast growth companies meet the multitude of legal requirements that monetizing and moving into new markets can create. As such, Baker McKenzie has designed the BakerCREDITS legal services package for start-ups and fast growth companies. CREDITS stands for contracts, regulations, employment,…

IDC Financial Insights has released its first perspective on robo-advisory titled Robo-Advisory: Changing the Face of Wealth in Asia/Pacific , which highlights the state of robo-advisory in seven hot markets in Asia/Pacific. China, Singapore, Australia, South Korea, Hong Kong, India, and Taiwan lead the way, with combined total assets under management (AUM) estimate on robo-advisory to reach US$500 billion by 2021. IDC Financial Insights defines robo-advisory. also known as automated or digital advice, as a set of automated systems that rely on algorithms to construct, manage, optimize, and rebalance wealth and asset management portfolios. In its purest form, the entire process of robo-advisory…

A new blockchain project is emerging in Vietnam that’s looking to develop a crypto token specifically for the beauty and spa industry. And it’s launching an ICO for it. Called Spacoin, the project is being developed by self-proclaimed “the biggest spa chain in Vietnam and, Laos and Cambodia with 30 branches,” the so-called Spa Foundation. The project says it aims to “combine the beauty care with the support of 4.0 technology to connect spas in the future,” according to the official website, and “create a beauty care ecology both at the micro and macro scale.” Spacoin will be used to…

Fintechnews.PH picks every Friday for you the top 5 Fintech Philippines News of the week: Here we go: MAS-BSP: Singapore & Philippines Regulators Forge Fintech Ties Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) and the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) today signed a FinTech Co-operation Agreement to promote innovation in financial services in their respective markets. The BSP-MAS CA was signed at the sidelines of the 2nd Singapore FinTech Festival that is currently being held in Singapore from 13 to 17 November 2017. (Read more) Fintech Firm Recasts Digital-Currency Proposal The enterprise software services and financial technology or fintech…

The love of Singaporeans for shopping is no secret – but they are used to navigating vast malls and handpicking their favourite brands. E-commerce has really taken off in the last few years, as you can tell by the recent decision of global e-commerce giant Amazon to test the waters of Southeast Asian markets by trying its luck in Singapore first. But in a country where local brands are doing particularly well, could Amazon challenge that monopoly? 7 out of 10 Most Popular Online Shopping Providers Are Local E-commerce in Singapore is a booming market: it is estimated to…

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and The Association of Banks in Singapore (ABS) today awarded 10 FinTech companies a total of S$1.15 million at the FinTech Awards. Reflecting the growth in the FinTech ecosystem, this year’s winning solutions span multiple business areas, such as digital advisory, investment analytics, blockchain-based biometrics, and e-payments. Deputy Prime Minister and Chairman, MAS, Mr Tharman Shanmugaratnam, and ABS Vice-Chairman, Mr Samuel Tsien, Group CEO, OCBC Bank, presented the awards to the 10 FinTech companies in a ceremony that was attended by more than 3,000 attendees. This was then followed by the awards ceremony for…

Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) and the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) today signed a FinTech Co-operation Agreement to promote innovation in financial services in their respective markets. The BSP-MAS CA was signed at the sidelines of the 2nd Singapore FinTech Festival that is currently being held in Singapore from 13 to 17 November 2017. The agreement provides a framework for co-operation and collaboration between the two authorities relating to FinTech. The authorities will be able to refer promising FinTech firms to each other, share emerging FinTech trends and developments, and facilitate work on FinTech projects together. These projects could…

Every week, we bring you the biggest IoT News from Asia and around the world. Today, we’re excited about the ID/AI conference at the Singapore Fintech Festival – check it out! In General: Smarter and faster – why manufacturers must embrace the Internet of Things – information-age.com Hilton and Marriott Turn to the Internet of Things to Transform the Hotel Room Experience – skift.com AI & Robotics: Ex-Google executive Anthony Levandowski is founding a church where people worship an artificial intelligence god – businessinsider.com Adobe Scan uses AI to find documents in your photo gallery – engadget.com Congratulations, it’s a girl: Exploring sexism in artificial…

HelloGold, a Malaysian based fintech firm that blends gold trading with blockchain technologies was announced as the winner of the the Critics’ Choice Most Innovative Islamic Retail Product Award. Organised by the UK-based financial intelligence house, Cambridge IF Analytica, the award recognised the platform’s features, which include being the world’s first Shariah-compliant certified online digital gold platform. Robin Lee, CEO, commented, “HelloGold was created to make gold and other sophisticated financial products affordable and available to everyone. We are proud that our achievements are being recognised. But, this is just the beginning – in the last two months, the HelloGold…

OurCrowd, an equity crowdfunding platform, today announced the appointment of Mr. Roland Wee as Managing Director of the company’s Asia operations. Roland will serve as a key addition to its senior leadership team to spearhead its continued growth and success in the region. Prior to joining OurCrowd, Roland served as Managing Director at HSBC and CEO of HSBC Securities Singapore. He brings 20 years of experience in financial markets, with a broad background in various capacities – as an analyst in the technology sector, as a fund manager, and most recently in HSBC management roles over the past 12 years.…

In his opening remarks at the Singapore Fintech Festival, Managing Director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore says that the future is already here. The world that we live in today is becoming increasingly digital and that is especially true in South East Asia where the number of digitally engaged consumers has surged by 50% to 200 million people. Fintech has been at the forefront of this digital renaissance, where 1 in 3 active users globally already consider themselves regular users of the fintech service and leading that charge is China where that figure is a staggering 70%.…

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) announced details of the new $27 million Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics (AIDA) Grant under the Financial Sector Technology and Innovation (FSTI) Scheme. Mr Ravi Menon, Managing Director of MAS, announced the launch of the grant at the Singapore FinTech Festival yesterday. This new grant aims to promote the adoption and integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and data analytics in financial institutions. The Singapore Artificial Intelligence Grant AIDA, will focus on two tracks: the Financial Institution Track and the Research Track. Under the Financial Institution Track, the AIDA Grant will co-fund up to 50%…

In an effort to drive awareness and deployment of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) and Internet of Things (IoT) services across public and private sectors, Industry Platform Pte Ltd announces the launch of Asia IoT Business Platform in Myanmar. Endorsed by the country’s Ministry of Transport and Communications, together with the support of the Ministries of Education, Commerce, and Industry, the conference marks the gathering of key policy makers, government officials, telecommunication operators, solution providers and local enterprises to explore the latest ICT/IoT technologies for business productivity, share case studies of IoT implementation, and establish business partnerships. In its economic…

Two Singapore-based fintech companies – Silent8 and SoCash – feature among ‘Emerging 50’ most promising fintech companies in the 2017 Fintech100 released today. The Fintech100 includes the ‘Leading 50’ fintech firms around the globe, ranked based on innovation, capital raising activity, size and reach; and the ‘Emerging 50’, exciting new fintechs that are at the forefront of innovative technologies and practices, and are often pursuing new business models. The Fintech100 is published by Fintech Innovators, a collaboration between Fintech investment firm H2 Ventures and KPMG Fintech. Silent8 utilises artificial intelligence, machine learning and various technologies in the area of cyber…

The industry consortium led by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and The Association of Banks in Singapore (ABS) has released the report and source-codes on Project Ubin the distributed ledger prototypes for inter-bank payments. The report : ‘Re-imagining Interbank Real-Time Gross Settlement Systems Using Distributed Ledger Technology’ describes the prototypes developed on three Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) platforms (Corda, Hyperledger Fabric and Quorum) and shares the findings and observations from the project. The source-codes and technical documentation of the three successful DLT based prototypes developed in Project Ubin Phase 2 have also been released for public access under Apache…

In light of the increased popularity of ICOs in Singapore, Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) published today their guidelines for digital token offerings, more popularly known as ICOs. The guidelines states that if the token is used as a capital market product it will be regulated by the authority. Commenting on the matter during his speech today at the Singapore Fintech Festival, Ravi Menon, Managing Director, MAS said “MAS does not regulate virtual currencies; in fact, we welcome them as an innovation that can potentially reduce the cost of financial transactions. But we regulate the activities that surround virtual currencies…

NETS today announced that it has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with National Payments Corporationof India (NPCI), an umbrella organization for all retail payments and settlement systems in India, to enable cross-border usage of their payment solutions in India and Singapore. The agreement will pave the way for NETS cards and digital wallets to be used for payments in India and similarly for RuPay-powered debit and credit cards to be accepted at all NETS terminals in Singapore. The first phase of the partnership, expected to be launched mid-2018, will see NETS and NPCI work to enable    NETS-powered digital cards to…