Asia

February 11, 2016 @ 4:34 am By Erin Hobey  |  

Mumbai-based P2P lending fintech startup, Capzest, has raised $200K in seed funding from LionVentures, a seed investment and innovation platform founded by Anurag Mehrotra founder of LionVentures; Varun Dua, co-founder and CEO of Coverfox; Amit Tambe, former senior partner of Trilegal India and Vikas Jhunjhunwala, a Mumbai-based textile businessman reported VC Circle…. Read More

February 9, 2016 @ 5:43 am By Erin Hobey  |  

UK FinTech firm Hello Soda, headquartered in Manchester, has launched ‘Hello Soda Asia’, its new South East Asian venture. The new FinTech venture which gives the firm a strategic foothold in South East Asia, will operate out of Bangkok, Thailand and Singapore, and will specifically… Read More

February 6, 2016 @ 7:21 pm By JD Alois  |  

Hanwha, one of the largest conglomerate companies in South Korea, has launched a partnership with Dianrong a leading peer to peer lender in China. The as of yet named entity will open an office in Singapore later this month. Hanwha is a Chaebol that formed an technology… Read More

February 5, 2016 @ 8:11 am By JD Alois  |  

Chinese crowdfunding platform KaiStart announced this week they had closed on a Series “A+” funding  round led by Matrix Partners and Vision Capital. At the end of 2015, KaiStart had revealed it had raised $5.2 million from a broad group of investors including; Incapital, Meridian… Read More

February 5, 2016 @ 12:16 am By JD Alois  |  

  Fundnel (pronounced like Funnel) is one of several investment crowdfunding platforms that have launched in Singapore over the past year. But even though there are a growing number of sites entering the internet finance space, Fundnel claims the title of Asia’s first collaborative fundraising platform… Read More

February 4, 2016 @ 6:00 am By Erin Hobey  |  

Indonesia’s Financial Services Authority (FSA), which regulates the banking and non-banking sector, is working with the Ministry of Communications and Information to bring out regulations governing online startup companies offering financial services, popularly referred to as fintech, reported DealStreetAsia. Indonesia is Southeast Asia’s largest economy (US$890B).  The new regulation will… Read More

February 4, 2016 @ 5:03 am By Erin Hobey  |  

Fintech opportunities are percolating in southeast Asia. Earlier this week, the Silicon-based venture capital firm, Sequoia Capital, closed a $920 M fund capital to invest majorly in Indian startups along with South East Asian companies.  With the reserve bank actively studying peer lending, this part of the globe… Read More

February 2, 2016 @ 5:04 am By Erin Hobey  |  

OCBC Bank has launched a fintech co-working space and innovation unit in Singapore and its first accelerator program to identify and collaborate with innovative startups. The 2,400-square foot Open Vault at OCBC has been established to help drive the development of new products and business models… Read More

February 2, 2016 @ 4:44 am By Erin Hobey  |  

Creditnation.in, a lending platform which combines credit advisory, analytics, process automation and last-mile connectivity, has announced that it has raised angel round funding for an undisclosed amount.  The platforms deals primarily in credit cards, loan against property, housing, personal, auto and business loans, and have already partnered… Read More

February 1, 2016 @ 11:21 am By JD Alois  |  

As reported in December, the Chinese peer to peer lender Ezubao (Ezubo), launched by Yucheng in 2014,  was shuttered by authorities as employees were questioned and managers were arrested by police.  Now Xinhua and other news outlets are providing details that are shaking up the… Read More

January 31, 2016 @ 9:47 pm By JD Alois  |  

Banking regulators are said to be establishing a “monitoring and warning system” against financial risk and fraud. This is a according to a report in China News that reported a statement that was released at a conference on political and legal work earlier this month…. Read More

January 30, 2016 @ 7:06 pm By Weiyang Research  |  

By the end of 2015, Kickstarter had launched 274,900 projects, of which 98,500 had successfully reached their fundraising goal. The total contributions added up to $2.147 billion US dollars. 10,101,800 people have been contributors on the Kickstarter platform, of which 3,135,900 were repeat backers. Kickstarter projects… Read More

January 29, 2016 @ 7:53 am By JD Alois  |  

Fundnel, an investment crowdfunding platform that has taken a regional approach to raising capital, has formed a partnership with Anthill Ventures – a venture group and “speed scaling firm” based in India.  Startups graduating from the Anthill program will be migrated to the Fundnel platform… Read More

January 22, 2016 @ 2:51 pm By JD Alois  |  

The Thai Securities and Exchange Commission has proposed rules for investment crowdfunding including the supervision of the investment portals. The SEC states that the proposed rules aim to establish a standard framework for operating crowdfunding portals. The supervised areas include measures and implementation against conflicts… Read More

January 21, 2016 @ 5:43 am By Erin Hobey  |  

Moody’s Investors Service avers that the development of domestic securitization markets will help India and China achieve their common goal of building inclusive financial systems that will ultimately bring affordable credit to the underprivileged segments of their societies and which are usually excluded from the conventional banking… Read More

January 21, 2016 @ 4:20 am By Erin Hobey  |  

Fresh from its October 2015 investment in US marketplace lender Kabbage, Dutch bank ING has taken a stake in WeLab, a non-bank provider of consumer loans in China and Hong Kong. ING participated in a Series B $160 million (RMB1 billion) fundraising in the three-year old… Read More

January 19, 2016 @ 10:22 pm By JD Alois  |  

As what will come as little surprise to many observers, a recent report out of China indicates that online fraud is on the rise, specifically within peer to peer lending. There have been repetitive, ongoing reports highlighting the risk of internet finance in China for… Read More

January 19, 2016 @ 6:16 am By Erin Hobey  |  

Commonwealth Bank of Australia today launched an Innovation Lab in Hong Kong and announced plans to launch an Innovation Lab in London later this year. This innovation network is a natural extension of the Bank’s successful Innovation Lab in Sydney and creates a global approach to… Read More

January 19, 2016 @ 5:52 am By Erin Hobey  |  

2016 proved eventful for payments network MasterCard, as the company has been involved in in many global fintech industry deals, according to a release.  With the intention of expanding its electronic payments network in other countries, MasterCard heavily invests in fintech and organises a six month… Read More

January 19, 2016 @ 1:27 am By Midori Yoshimura  |  

Backed by Ping An Insurance Group Co of China Ltd., Lufax, a Chinese peer-to-peer lender, has raised $1.2 billion from a group of investors, making it one of the world’s most valuable financial technology startups.  The capital raising values Lufax at $18.5 billion. The Shanghai-based Shanghai Lujiazui International Financial Asset Exchange Co… Read More