Author: Fintech News Singapore

BNPL is a lifeline for Malaysians shut out of formal credit, or a fast route into debt, depending on who you ask. ShopeePay’s CEO makes his case. Alain Yee joined Shopee in 2019 as CEO of ShopeePay Malaysia, launching the e-wallet two to three years after its main rivals. SPayLater followed in 2021 and cash lending in 2022. He also leads Monee in Malaysia, Sea’s digital financial services business, and is president of the Association of E-Money Issuers (AEMI). Before Shopee, he worked in consulting and finance in London, then at Discovery Channel and McKinsey before joining Astro. In this…

Antom, Ant International’s merchant payment and digitisation services provider, is partnering with Google Gemini to expand access to Google AI Plus through its digital platform and merchant network in Asia. The initiative uses A+Rewards, Antom’s digital marketing solution, to provide in-app entry points for users to access offers from participating brands and digital services. Antom has integrated A+Rewards into more than 30 digital platform partners, connecting about 2.85 billion active digital payment users. The solution uses privacy-preserving computing and AI technologies to provide users with access to offers, including subscription trials and other benefits. The rollout began in Indonesia in…

Thought Machine has partnered with Amazon Web Services (AWS) on an AI-powered solution for banks moving from legacy systems to its Vault core banking platform. The solution combines AWS Transform’s mainframe discovery and reverse engineering tools with Vault Forge, Thought Machine’s AI tooling suite. It aims to reduce the time and cost of core banking migration, according to Thought Machine. Rather than translating legacy code line by line, the process extracts the business rules behind functions such as interest calculations, fee schedules and loan repayments. The Vault platform keeps financial product logic separate from its core infrastructure. This separation allows…

Tookitaki President Isabel Ridad will become CEO in September with full responsibility for leading the company and overseeing its operations. Founder Abhishek Chatterjee will move to Executive Chairman and Chair of the Board. His role will cover the company’s overall direction, AI strategy, board management and key client and regulator relationships as the Singapore-headquartered business expands into new markets. Ridad currently oversees growth, commercial operations, finance and legal. She also leads Tookitaki’s expansion across Asia Pacific and beyond. Her appointment formalises the leadership role she has increasingly held across the business. “I am honoured to have the opportunity to lead…

More seniors are paying digitally through OCBC’s app, with transaction numbers rising nearly 60% in the year ending 30 June 2026. According to the bank’s data, the number of customers aged 60 and above making these payments also grew by nearly 30% compared with a year earlier. Their use of PayNow to pay online shopping platforms such as Shopee and TikTok Shop reached 1.5 times the level recorded a year earlier. The number of overseas QR payments seniors made through the app’s Scan & Pay feature more than doubled over the same period. China accounted for almost 80% of the…

Embedded finance has settled into the region’s everyday digital life. Payments, credit and wallets now sit inside platforms customers use for something else entirely. What has not settled is who captures the value. The platform owns the journey and the data. Someone further back supplies the licence, the balance sheet and the underlying infrastructure and carries the risk when something goes wrong. Both sides claim the customer, and the economics between them are still being renegotiated deal by deal. The competitive picture is also shifting. Some platforms have stopped partnering for banking capability and started acquiring it. Some fintechs are…

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has appointed five more asset managers under its equities programme and set aside S$20 million to support trading in Singapore-listed stocks. MAS will place S$1.45 billion with Amundi, Franklin Templeton, HSBC Asset Management, M&G Investments and Natixis Investment Managers. It expects them to use their global distribution networks to attract more international investment into Singapore equities. The third batch of appointments brings total allocations under the S$6.5 billion Equity Market Development Programme to S$5.4 billion across 14 asset managers. MAS is reviewing proposals for a fourth batch and expects to complete the review in…

Sumsub is seeking experts for a new Asia-Pacific council focused on the identity, delegated authority and oversight of AI agents. The Sumsub Agentic AI Council will bring together people from policy, academia, technology, industry and civil society to develop guidance on how organisations can use AI agents responsibly. Its work will cover applications for AI agents, the technical systems needed to support them and approaches to governing their use. The council plans to produce guidance and research reports and hold discussions with industry and policymakers. Its first working group is expected to examine agentic commerce, including questions of identity, accountability…

Deutsche Bank plans to bring IPID’s verification, fraud and compliance signals into more of its global payment decisions. The bank already uses selected IPID fraud prevention tools. Under a planned partnership, the companies intend to expand the use of IPID’s technology across Deutsche Bank’s global payments business. IPID combines signals for verification, fraud detection, compliance and payment optimisation. The companies also plan to develop new capabilities to help assess payments before money moves. They expect the wider rollout to support faster processing, better fraud detection and more efficient routing, while giving clients greater certainty that funds will reach the intended…

Thailand’s DeeMoney has selected SEON to screen international transfers for fraud and money laundering risks. Licensed by the Bank of Thailand, DeeMoney lets customers send money from Thailand to more than 85 countries. It also processes incoming payments from more than 70 global partners. DeeMoney will use SEON’s platform for fraud scoring, transaction monitoring and anti-money laundering screening under one rules engine. The company also sought stronger capabilities in areas including geolocation, VPN detection and real-time risk assessment. SEON migrated DeeMoney’s existing fraud rules from its previous provider without disrupting live operations. “Cross-border payments platforms like DeeMoney operate on speed…

Citi has expanded its collaboration with Coinbase to integrate traditional banking rails with digital asset platforms. The partnership provides corporate and institutional clients with scalable on and off ramps for stablecoin payments, removing the need for businesses to build separate blockchain infrastructure. The collaboration centres on two main initiatives, which are launching first in the US. Launching first in the US, the initiatives form part of a broader effort to bridge traditional finance and digital assets. The collaboration also supports Citi’s strategy to develop end-to-end payments solutions for the digital economy. Coinbase has selected the Citi Virtual Account Wallet to…

Mastercard has introduced Advanced B2B Analytics to help banks find suppliers more likely to accept card payments. The platform analyses corporate accounts payable data and uses AI to score suppliers by their likelihood of accepting cards. Interactive dashboards help banks and their clients review payment activity and decide which suppliers to approach. Mastercard is targeting a common difficulty in business payments: banks and corporate buyers may have the data to identify card payment opportunities, but it is often spread across different systems or handled through manual processes. The company also offers support from its Advisors & Transformation team to help…

Alpaca has secured in-principle approval from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) for a Capital Markets Services (CMS) license. The approval paves the way for Alpaca Securities Pte. Ltd., its Singapore entity, to provide brokerage and custodial services and act as a local counterparty for financial institutions across Southeast Asia once fully licensed. Alpaca plans to use Singapore as a regional base for its operations as it expands across Southeast Asia. The company aims to provide local financial institutions and fintech firms with regulated access to its global brokerage infrastructure, which could enable them to offer international investment products to…

Jonathan Lee, Partners and Alliances Director APAC at BPC, discusses how modern issuing platforms and disciplined migration are helping banks respond to changing payment behaviour and scale new card services across Asia Pacific. In October 2025, a visitor from China could arrive in Thailand, open Alipay, UnionPay or WeChat Pay, and pay a local merchant by scanning a Thai QR code. The Bank of Thailand said the launch expanded its cross-border QR payment connections to nine jurisdictions. To the customer, the schemes, currency conversion and settlement process disappear behind a familiar mobile action. That is the benchmark against which issuing…

HLB Private Bank has launched a multi-asset fund in partnership with Lombard Odier. The HLB Chief Investment Office Fund is a wholesale fund that the bank intends to use as a foundation for future portfolio construction. It draws on Lombard Odier’s investment research and HLB’s understanding of clients in Singapore and the wider region. The fund is designed to invest across global equities, fixed income and other instruments. Its approach includes actively managed funds, passive investments and direct equity holdings. HLB said it can select funds from an open-architecture universe of more than 50,000 global funds. The strategy also aims…

Singapore-based insurtech Igloo narrowed its net loss to S$8.6 million in 2025 as revenue rose to S$80.9 million. Its audited results show a 60.4% reduction in net loss and 45.9% revenue growth from the previous year. Igloo attributed the improvement to higher partnership volumes in its embedded insurance business and automation of product development, partner operations and claims processing. The company said engineering output increased without a proportionate rise in headcount. The reported loss included S$2 million in non-cash share-based compensation, down from S$3.9 million in 2024, and S$1.1 million in foreign exchange translation losses. Raunak Mehta, Co-Founder and Chief…

Antom, Ant International’s merchant payment and digitisation services provider, has announced a series of leadership appointments across Southeast Asia. The moves aim to strengthen synergy among its regional brands and offer merchants more unified, AI-native payment solutions. Antom has appointed Nabilah Alsagoff, co-founder and former Chief Operating Officer of DOKU, as Head of Product for Antom SEA. She will oversee product development and a unified product roadmap across the region. Chris Yeo, former CEO of DOKU, becomes Head of Antom Philippines and Country Head of 2C2P Philippines. Drawing on prior experience at DOKU, Grab and PayPal, he will oversee Antom’s…

Singapore has called for countries to consider a United Nations (UN) framework convention on AI safeguards as the technology advances across borders. In a speech at the UN General Assembly on 26 September, Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan urged countries to develop common methods for assessing AI risks, testing models and reporting serious incidents. A framework convention was one option he proposed exploring. Balakrishnan warned that autonomous systems could act beyond human control and that malicious actors could use AI to develop dangerous weapons. He also pointed to emerging economic and social disruption. To address these risks, he called for rigorous…

Circle’s Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Jeremy Fox-Geen plans to step down after more than five years in the role. He will remain CFO until the end of December 2026 unless Circle appoints a successor sooner. The company has begun its search for a replacement with the help of an executive search firm. Fox-Geen joined Circle in May 2021 and helped build its finance organisation. He also played a role in the company’s US$1.2 billion initial public offering. “Jeremy has played a key role in building Circle into the company it is today. He brought strategic insight, financial leadership, and operating…

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Asia-Pacific (APAC) are embracing digital tools, new payments methods, and artificial intelligence (AI) to grow their businesses. Yet, as the use of technology increases, many are looking for simpler, more flexible and more connected ways to manage their operations, according to new research by Mastercard. Mastercard’s Dreamonomics Report, based on a 2026 survey of more than 6,000 respondents across 18 markets, including 1,027 respondents across Australia, China, India and Indonesia, found that APAC SMEs are big adopters of business tools, averaging five per firm. With greater adoption comes a stronger need for effective oversight.…