Asia

June 15, 2020 @ 11:00 pm By Omar Faridi  |  

The Qatar Fintech Hub (QFTH), co-founded by Qatar Development Bank (QDB), is planning to encourage and support multinational Fintech firms to establish operations in the Middle Eastern country. The QFTH noted during a recent meeting that it’s working with several global Fintech hubs. The organization’s… Read More

June 15, 2020 @ 10:33 pm By Omar Faridi  |  

The rise of Chinese Fintech firms as major industry participants across Asia is playing a vital role in transforming the region’s financial services ecosystem. Joe Ngai, partner at consultants McKinsey & Co, confirmed: “Chinese Fintech companies have been expanding overseas.”  In 2016, Ant Financial, the… Read More

June 15, 2020 @ 9:13 am By Omar Faridi  |  

Authorities in China’s Guangdong province have reportedly frozen around 4,000 bank accounts which might be linked to money laundering operations through Bitcoin (BTC) and other cryptocurrencies. Local sources said that Guangdong police officials have identified bank accounts that allegedly belong to virtual currency over-the-counter (OTC)… Read More

June 15, 2020 @ 8:00 am By Samantha Hurst  |  

American Express (NYSE: AXP) announced over the weekend it secured a clearing license in the midland of China. According to the credit card giant, Express (Hangzhou) Technology Services Company Limited (Express Company)  received approval from the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) for the license and… Read More

June 15, 2020 @ 7:28 am By Omar Faridi  |  

WhatsApp Payments, an in-chat payment feature that lets customers perform transfers through the messaging app to anyone in their contact list, may finally be on track to achieve mass adoption in India. WhatsApp is owned by Facebook, (NASDAQ:FB) who bought the social media platform in… Read More

June 14, 2020 @ 9:23 pm By Omar Faridi  |  

Indian financial services group IIFL (India Infoline) recently introduced an initiative that aims to support local Fintech firms that might be experiencing challenges due to COVID-19. IIFL’s initiative, #IIFLDisrupt, aims to assist Indian Fintechs by providing funding, and potentially becoming their first client. IIFL also… Read More

June 14, 2020 @ 7:52 pm By Omar Faridi  |  

Vinay Pagaria, co-founder at India-based StockEdge, a company that helps India’s residents, particularly the younger generations, with learning more about how to responsibly and effectively invest their money in stocks and bonds, has revealed that the platform now has 1 million registered users. Pagaria claims:… Read More

June 14, 2020 @ 6:48 pm By Omar Faridi  |  

Sidharth Sogani, a Certified Bitcoin Professional and CEO at CREBACO Global Inc, a credit rating firm for exchanges, blockchains and coin offerings, has argued that it’s clear the Indian government hasn’t figured out how Bitcoin (BTC) works. There’s a new proposal that aims to ban… Read More

June 13, 2020 @ 10:00 pm By Omar Faridi  |  

Singapore-based GBCI Ventures, a venture capital and private equity firm, has made a strategic $11 million investment in Fintech startup Fincy. The company is also in the process of finalizing external funding. The Fincy team describes their platform as a multi-purpose solution providing digital and… Read More

June 13, 2020 @ 2:31 pm By Xu Gao  |  

Workforce Operational Solution Provider Quhuo Files for U.S. IPO On June 4th, Quhuo, a workforce operational solution provider for China’s consumer service industry, filed for an IPO on the U.S. stock market. According to the F-1 prospectus document, Quhuo plans to be listed on the… Read More

June 13, 2020 @ 2:06 pm By Omar Faridi  |  

PARSIQ, a blockchain monitoring and workflow automation platform that provides tools for analyzing, detecting, and preventing cryptocurrency-related fraud, and Dash NEXT, the Asia-based business development division supporting Dash (a digital asset platform), are extending their existing partnership. PARISQ and Dash NEXT aim to enable real-time… Read More

June 13, 2020 @ 11:45 am By Omar Faridi  |  

Dubai-based Tpay Mobile, a mobile payment provider, has reportedly acquired Payguru, a Turkish payments company. The amount paid for the acquisition has not been disclosed. Payguru supports mobile payments, ATM cash payments, and standard bank transfer services. The company has integrated its platform with three… Read More

June 13, 2020 @ 9:36 am By Omar Faridi  |  

Indian officials are reportedly considering passing a law that would ban the use of decentralized cryptocurrencies.  As reported by India’s Economic Times, the nation’s government might see a legal framework as being more effective than the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) blanket ban on crypto-assets…. Read More

June 12, 2020 @ 7:03 pm By Omar Faridi  |  

The Singapore Fintech Association (SFA), a cross-industry non-profit initiative that’s focused on supporting collaboration between all market participants and stakeholders in the financial technology industry, has introduced a digital self-assessment framework to improve working relationships between companies. According to the association, the framework should expedite… Read More

June 12, 2020 @ 6:25 pm By Omar Faridi  |  

David Chan, CEO at Monedo (previously Kreditech), a point of sale (PoS) lender that claims to have more than one million customers who have reportedly received over 2 million loans (as of March 2020), says that the online lender has a global addressable market of… Read More

June 12, 2020 @ 5:31 pm By Omar Faridi  |  

Singapore-based Three Arrows Capital, a digital asset hedge fund, has reportedly become the first qualified investor to hold over 5% of Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust (OTC:GBTC) shares. According to Grayscale, its Bitcoin Trust’s shares are the first publicly quoted securities “solely invested in and deriving value… Read More

June 12, 2020 @ 11:08 am By Omar Faridi  |  

  Australia is reportedly planning to extend one of its Fintech agreements with the UK. The agreement is designed to help Fintech firms in each country by making it easier for them to acquire operational licenses. Both jurisdictions also aim to increase cooperation and collaboration… Read More

June 12, 2020 @ 12:22 am By Omar Faridi  |  

Indonesian tech giant Gojek’s electronic wallet GoPay has introduced a gold-investment feature, GoInvestasi, through a partnership with investment Fintech firm Pluang. Budi Gandasoebrata, MD at GoPay, noted that the rising demand for making investments via digital wallets had led to GoPay providing the new investment… Read More

June 11, 2020 @ 11:45 pm By Omar Faridi  |  

The Fintech sector in Indonesia is reportedly struggling due to potentially risky loans as lenders on local peer to peer (P2P) lending marketplaces rejected over half of loan restructuring requests from debtors. This, according to a recent survey which revealed that Indonesia’s residents and businesses… Read More

June 11, 2020 @ 11:09 pm By Omar Faridi  |  

South Korea’s Financial Supervisory Service (FSS), a financial regulator that examines and supervises financial institutions under the oversight of the Financial Services Commission (FSC), is reportedly planning to look into the security of various Fintech platforms, due to unauthorized payments being conducted via Toss. Toss… Read More