Asia

December 20, 2019 @ 11:22 am By Omar Faridi  |  

Wamda, an established startup ecosystem supporter in the Middle East, recently co-led a $3 million Series A investment round with Global Ventures in Floranow, a business-to-business (B2B) online floral marketplace. Existing investors including Dash Ventures, Jabbar Internet Group, and new investors Sirocco Holdings, Adamtech Ventures,… Read More

December 20, 2019 @ 9:48 am By Samantha Hurst  |  

FIS (NYSE: FIS) announced on Thursday it has entered into an agreement with JCB, a global payment network. Through the agreement, FIS’ global e-commerce platform, WorldPay, will allow businesses that are operating in Japan to accept payments by JCB cards and will now provide an… Read More

December 20, 2019 @ 8:10 am By Samantha Hurst  |  

CoinEx, a global and professional cryptocurrency exchange service provider, announced on Friday it received an operating license from the Estonian Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU). The Hong Kong-based platform is now a fully regulated cryptocurrency exchange under the Estonian laws and is now able to provide… Read More

December 20, 2019 @ 8:00 am By Cali Haan  |  

Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Coincheck, which sustained a $534 million USD hack last January, has decided to stop offering leveraged trades of cryptocurrencies on its platform. According to a company blog post: “Coincheck has decided to end the “leverage transaction” service on Friday, March 13, 2020…If… Read More

December 19, 2019 @ 7:57 am By Omar Faridi  |  

Gurugram, India-based insurance technology (Insurtech) firm Toffee Insurance revealed on December 17 that it had secured $5.5 million via a Series A investment round led by IVM Intersurer, Omidyar Network, Flourish Ventures, Accion Venture Lab and Kalaari Capital. Toffee says it will use the capital… Read More

December 18, 2019 @ 9:42 pm By Omar Faridi  |  

Murex, an established provider of trading, risk management and processing platforms for financial markets, recently revealed that Gulf Bank, one of the largest banks in Kuwait, has chosen MX.3 to upgrade and digitize its capital markets and treasury IT. Murex was chosen to be a… Read More

December 18, 2019 @ 2:19 pm By Samantha Hurst  |  

Chinese digital bank WeBank announced on Wednesday it has formed new partnerships with cloud computing platform Tencent Cloud and deep learning research Mila. According to WeBank, the partnerships will seek to protect data privacy while enabling cross-organization collaborations in both AI and fintech, which is… Read More

December 18, 2019 @ 12:00 pm By Samantha Hurst  |  

FinVolution Group, a China-based fintech that connects underserved individual borrows with financial institutions, announced on Wednesday it has made an equity investment in Fujian Haixia Bank (FHB). The company reported it has subscribed for 281 million of newly issued shares of the bank, which notably… Read More

December 17, 2019 @ 9:56 pm By JD Alois  |  

As non-bank payments firms rapidly emerge, China has instituted rules for these services to make payments to the state. The measures were revealed on December 6, 2019 and come into effect on January 6, 2020. As part of the process the People’s Bank of China… Read More

December 17, 2019 @ 4:47 pm By Cali Haan  |  

Macau businessperson Frederico dos Santos Rosário and his Hong Kong business partner, Dennis Lau, are being prosecuted in Macau for promoting OneCoin, a fraudulent $4 billion USD cryptocurrency scheme started by Bulgarians Ruja and Konstantin Ignatov and pervaded across the world. According to Journal Tribune… Read More

December 17, 2019 @ 11:00 am By Xu Gao  |  

Winners of 2019 Global Fintech Venture Competition Announced On December 15th, the award ceremony of 2019 Global Fintech Venture Competition (hereinafter referred to as the “Competition”) was held at Tsinghua University. With the guidance of Tsinghua IFR and support from Haidian District People’s Government of… Read More

December 17, 2019 @ 10:33 am By Omar Faridi  |  

Bank Muscat, the leading financial services provider in the Sultanate, recently revealed that the Central Bank of Oman has approved the institution’s request to establish a $100 million (appr. OMR38.5 million) nationwide, strategic Fintech investment program. The investment program is reportedly part of Bank Muscat’s… Read More

December 17, 2019 @ 7:07 am By Omar Faridi  |  

South Korea-based Viva Republica, a Fintech firm that developed Toss, a financial services platform, has been given preliminary approval for an online banking license from the Financial Services Commission of Korea, according to a December 16 release. SG Lee, CEO at Viva Republica, stated: “Toss… Read More

December 17, 2019 @ 1:22 am By Cali Haan  |  

Chinese authorities have arrested Yang Zuoxing, an electronics engineer who reputedly designed several of Bitmain’s most popular “Antmine” cryptomining rigs in 2016 before he left and started a rival firm called MicroBT. Since then, Coindesk reports, MicroBT, based in Shenzhen, has reportedly captured about 40% market… Read More

December 16, 2019 @ 11:22 am By Omar Faridi  |  

China’s “smart” courts have reportedly been implementing various innovative technologies such as blockchain and artificial intelligence (AI) to help decide legal cases. Local media outlet Xinhua news revealed recently that over 3.1 million Chinese litigation matters from March to October 2019 were handled via the… Read More

December 16, 2019 @ 11:16 am By Omar Faridi  |  

Cardano (ADA), one of the largest (by market cap) platforms for building and deploying decentralized applications (dApps), now has over 5 billion ADA tokens, worth about $195 million, staked on its testnet – reportedly within 24 hours of the launch of Cardano’s testnet. Input Output… Read More

December 15, 2019 @ 10:41 pm By Samantha Hurst  |  

Western Union (NYSE: WU) announced last week it is launching its cross-border payment services in Japan. The company notably partnered with remittance company City Express to launch the service to enable global used-car customers to buy from BE FORWARD, which is one of Japan’s used-car… Read More

December 15, 2019 @ 2:33 pm By Omar Faridi  |  

Indian online payments company Paytm’s parent has secured 4,724 Crore (appr. $660 million) from several large investors including Alibaba’s Alipay, SoftBank’s SVF Panther (Cayman) and investments are overseen by T Rowe Price. The board members of One 97 Communications Ltd, Paytm’s parent, will be allocating… Read More

December 15, 2019 @ 10:00 am By Omar Faridi  |  

Chinese Fintech firm Ant Financial Services (part of Alibaba (NYSE:BABA)) and US asset management company, The Vanguard Group, have launched a joint initiative that offers retail investment advisory and consulting services to investors in China, the companies revealed on December 13. The announcement has come… Read More

December 13, 2019 @ 3:53 pm By JD Alois  |  

OneConnect (NYSE:OCFT), a Fintech off-shoot of Ping An, listed its shares on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) today. The initial public offering raised around $260 million following a decision to slice the offer in half due to demand concerns. Ping An is one of… Read More