Asia

May 20, 2017 @ 4:08 pm By JD Alois  |  

Mumbai-Singapore based Telr, founded in 2014 by Sirish Kumar and Elias Ghanmen, has received additional funding in a Series B round. Telr received $3 million led by Innovation East Funds.  Telr is a payments gateway, MCA and ecommerce platform that is growing in emerging markets. Telr expects… Read More

May 20, 2017 @ 3:45 pm By JD Alois  |  

Qupital, an online invoice discounting exchange, has received $2 million in seed funding led by Alibaba Entrepreneurs Fund and MindWorks Ventures. Several other VCs participated including DRL Capital and Aria Group. Alibaba Entrepreneurs Fund is a not-for-profit initiative launched by Alibaba Group in 2015 to help… Read More

May 20, 2017 @ 9:36 am By Jonathan Nieh  |  

According to TechinAsia, StashAway, a Fintech startup based in Singapore focused on providing wealth management, announced it had secured US $2.15 million in funding for its Series A round. StashAway is a software solution for individual investors to manage their investment portfolio. StashAway claims to… Read More

May 19, 2017 @ 4:29 am By Erin Hobey  |  

Chinese P2P lender Dianrong announced a new technology agreement with Maggie Ng, a leading consumer banking executive in Asia Pacific, to launch a global fintech marketplace connecting Asian investors with high-quality, low-volatility and largely untapped asset classes, including U.S. consumer lending. Founded in 2012, Dianrong originates… Read More

May 19, 2017 @ 3:50 am By Erin Hobey  |  

Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM), the international financial centre in Abu Dhabi, has joined R3 as a new member of its international consortium. ADGM is the first regulatory body in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region to be part of the R3 consortium, comprising over… Read More

May 19, 2017 @ 2:52 am By JD Alois  |  

Paytm is launching a bank. The news was published in advance of the announcement that SoftBank had invested $1.6 billion into Paytm’s parent company One97 Communications Limited. The SoftBank investment may have been incentivized due to the fact the Reserve Bank of India had approved the… Read More

May 18, 2017 @ 3:52 pm By JD Alois  |  

Online lender PaySense has raised $5.3 million in a Series A funding round led by Jungle Ventures. PaySense, based in India, allows consumer unsecured loans. Founded in 2015 and based in Mumbai, Paysense seeks to solve the fundamental problem of not having simple, convenient and… Read More

May 18, 2017 @ 10:46 am By JD Alois  |  

As part of a broader initiative to encourage Fintech innovation, the Financial Services Development Council of Hong Kong has published a report on Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) or Blockchain. Recently, we shared a report on Fintech in which the FSDC chastised officials for not moving… Read More

May 18, 2017 @ 9:19 am By JD Alois  |  

Paytm has announced that SoftBank has invested in their parent company One97 Communications Limited. The $1.6 billion commitment is said to be the single largest funding round from a single investor in India. Crowdfund Insider reported this past week that Paytm was discussing an investment… Read More

May 18, 2017 @ 7:10 am By Erin Hobey  |  

UK Fintech TransferWise has reached operational profitability six years after launch, according to a release. The Estonia-founded, London-based currency exchange startup indicated that it is currently amassing £8 million a month in revenue and is on target to reach £100 million for 2017. “To have hit… Read More

May 18, 2017 @ 1:34 am By JD Alois  |  

Hong Kong has been sizing up the Fintech sector of finance for awhile now. But while Hong Kong is a regional financial powerhouse, when it comes to Fintech innovation they have ceded ground to Singapore.  Yet authorities recognize that Fintech has the potential to deliver… Read More

May 17, 2017 @ 7:41 am By JD Alois  |  

DoFinance, part of the Latvian Alfa Finance Group, has opened an office in Indonesia as part of an Asian expansion of their peer to peer lending operations. DoFinance said they were applying a “customer-oriented approach set to European standards” for private Asian investors. The expansion… Read More

May 17, 2017 @ 1:50 am By JD Alois  |  

CCRManager Pte Ltd, a Fintech company based in Singapore, has launched an online platform for the distribution of trade finance, supply chain finance and working capital assets.  The online platform will enable banks to manage the entire process of distributing trade finance internationally to other… Read More

May 16, 2017 @ 10:11 am By Erin Hobey  |  

Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM), the International Financial Centre in Abu Dhabi, has announced its first batch of Fintech Regulatory Laboratory (Reglab) participants comprising five local and international Fintech startups with various innovation offerings.The ADGM Reglab is reportedly the first Fintech regulatory sandbox and framework in the… Read More

May 16, 2017 @ 8:54 am By JD Alois  |  

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has announced the 2nd edition of the Singapore FinTech Festival, to be held in Singapore from 13 to 17 November 2017. The event is organized in partnership with The Association of Banks in Singapore (ABS) and in collaboration with SingEx… Read More

May 16, 2017 @ 5:21 am By Erin Hobey  |  

The People’s Bank of China has set up a committee that will investigate the impact of fintech on monetary policy and financial markets as well as how big data and AI can be used for regulatory oversight, according to a release. China has emerged as a… Read More

May 16, 2017 @ 3:54 am By Jonathan Nieh  |  

Fintech company QuantGroup, which was founded by several notable Chinese movie stars, is considering a US IPO, according to an article published in Bloomberg last week. The firm is looking to raise an estimated $200 million according to unnamed sources. Major Star Power The Beijing-based… Read More

May 16, 2017 @ 2:01 am By Jonathan Nieh  |  

As reported by Forbes today, Alibaba has invested in online invoice exchange marketplace Qupital, marking the Chinese e-commerce giant’s first foray into fintech investment in Hong Kong. Qupital raised a total of $2 million in its seed round. Accounts Receivable Marketplace Qupital bills itself as Hong Kong’s… Read More

May 15, 2017 @ 6:36 am By Erin Hobey  |  

Indonesian P2P lender Taralite announced that it has a raised a US$6.3 million funding round from Japanese fintech conglomerate SBI Group, the valuation of the round was undisclosed, according to multiple news sources. Begun as as a lending platform that finances celebratory events such as weddings and Hajj… Read More

May 14, 2017 @ 11:18 pm By JD Alois  |  

Launched in 2015 with the personal approval from the Chinese President Xi Jinping, Silk Ventures is on a mission is to build the most advanced New ‘Silk Road’ for technology companies seeking to expand to China and for Chinese companies seeking to ‘go global’.  The… Read More