What The FinTech #121 - 27 Nov 2022
Happy Sunday & Welcome back to What The FinTech, your regular FinTech & Innovation Newsletter focusing on Hong Kong & Asia!
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What you would have missed If you spent the entire week traveling
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What The FinTech Video & Podcast - Episode 46
Last Wednesday, I was joined by Theodora Lau, Founder of Unconventional Ventures, for an enthralling interview about their consulting services to drive innovation to improve systematic financial wellness.
Check out the previous videos here: on What The FinTech, Instagram or Youtube.
The previous interviews are available on podcast: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts.
What The FinTech - Episode 47
On Wednesday, I'll be in an interesting interview with Julio Orr & Oscar Venhuis from Happyer.
Please join us and let me know if you have any questions.
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What was the FinTech this week in: 📰
HONG KONG
Hong Kong's ZA Bank integrates with Wise
Hong Kong's ZA Bank integrates with Wise
Hong Kong’s virtual bank ZA Bank and Wise, a cross-border payments company, jointly announced a partnership to offer low-cost and quick international money transfers to Hongkongers. With the partnership, ZA Bank users will be able to make international money transfers with no exchange rate mark-ups or hidden fees, from HKD to 14 currencies, including AUD, USD, GBP, CAD, SGD. With the offering, users will be able to see a single upfront fee when initiating a remittance. Users’ will also be kept notified on the transfer’s progress through the bank app so they know exactly where the money is.
SINGAPORE
Nium rolls out new closed loop payments tool for airlines and OTAs
Thunes rolls out instant payouts to Tencent's Weixin users
VC Plus Gets In-Principle Approval to Provide Custodial Services for Digital Assets
Singapore’s MAS: FTX not licensed, protection of local users impossible
Nium rolls out new closed loop payments tool for airlines and OTAs
Singapore-based payments platform Nium has introduced a new closed-loop payments solution for airlines, travel agents, and online travel agencies (OTAs). Dubbed Nium Airline Payments (NAP), the tool has been empowered by universal air travel plan (UATP). The closed-loop payments model has been designed to eliminate surcharges and business that limit non-acceptance policies that have increased the cost of B2B travel payments. Nium has developed NAP using technology from Ixaris, a travel payments optimisation provider that it bought last year. NAP removes intermediaries, which levy charges, from the payment flow, giving airlines the flexibility and control to design transparent incentives for OTA partners, based on routes, seasonality, business volumes and others.
Thunes rolls out instant payouts to Tencent's Weixin users
Singapore-based cross-border payments network Thunes has partnered with Tencent Financial Technology, Tencent’s fintech arm. Through the partnership, Thunes has reportedly become the first payment infrastructure partner connecting with Tencent. This collaboration will allow members of Thunes’ global network to send international payments to Weixin users, thus offering them fast and easy access to the Chinese market. The news follows Thunes’ announcement of plans to ramp up partnerships and accelerate its expansion in January 2022. At the time, the company committed to intensify its focus on building local partnerships with local digital payment players to enable businesses and consumers to make payments to and from China, supporting business payments, global collections, and virtual accounts setup. Thunes also piloted its virtual account service to connect China-based payment service providers to Indonesia ecommerce buyers. In August 2022, Thunes, partnered with Alipay+ to allow its customers and merchants in Europe to accept Asia’s most popular mobile wallets.
VC Plus Gets In-Principle Approval to Provide Custodial Services for Digital Assets
Investment firm VC Plus announced that its subsidiary Custody Plus has received in-principle approval for a Capital Markets Services (CMS) license from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). This allows Custody Plus to provide custodial services for capital market products, including tokenised securities. VC Plus had secured shareholders’ approval in April 2021 to diversify into the new business of custodian for digital assets and consultancy in the financial and blockchain technology sector.
Singapore’s MAS: FTX not licensed, protection of local users impossible
The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has clarified that it was not possible for the central bank to protect local users of the services of the beleaguered cryptocurrency exchange, FTX, as the business was not licensed to provide virtual asset services in the country.The financial regulatory authority also faulted the belief that Singaporean investors’ assets in FTX could have been protected if they were domiciled in the crypto exchange’s local subsidiary, Quoine Pte Limited.Theregulator’s comment comes on the heel of the collapse of the once-beloved FTX whose fall was precipitated by a liquidity crisis and its failed attempt for a bail-out, forcing it to file for bankruptcy in the United States.Following FTX’s collapse, severalventure capital firms, such as Singapore’s Temasek, Soft Bank’s Vision Fund and Sequoia Capital, have been writing off millions of dollars of their investments in FTX.
CHINA
China’s tech giants promise speculation-free NFTs
Wells Fargo and HSBC add offshore Yuan to blockchain-based FX settlement system
China’s tech giants promise speculation-free NFTs
The future of non-fungible tokens is getting more clarity in China as the country’s tech giants come together to formulate standards for the nascent industry. The China Cultural Industry Association, along with Tencent, Ant Group, Baidu and others, jointly issued a “self-disciplined development proposal” for the “digital collectible industry,” a rebranded term for NFT in China to do away with the technology’s financial aspects. Digital collectible platforms, according to the proposal, should hold relevant regulatory permits, ensure the security of underlying blockchain technologies, enforce user real-identity checks, step up intellectual property protection, resolutely ban financial speculations and promote rational consumption among users. Tech firms in China have been testing the waters before NFT regulations set in. Behemoths from Tencent, Ant Group to Baidu have all launched their digital collectible marketplaces built on private, consortium chains. Users can only make purchases with the Chinese fiat currency RMB, and secondary trading is widely prohibited to prevent price gouging.
Wells Fargo and HSBC add offshore Yuan to blockchain-based FX settlement system
Wells Fargo and HSBC, two of the world’s largest banks, have added the offshore version of China’s yuan (CNH) to their blockchain-based foreign exchange (FX) settlement system. The offshore yuan is the fifth currency settled between the two banks, using a shared settlement ledger that includes American and Canadian dollars, Britain’s pound sterling, and the euro. HSBC Head of Global Partnerships Mark Williamson noted that the extension of CNH PvP settlement to Wells Fargo is an important milestone for reducing Herstatt Risk outside G10 currencies and added that this development is only the first step in extending their coverage into emerging markets currencies.
ASIA
Credit card-UPI linkage: Driving the next wave of growth in India digital payments
Tencent Cloud introduces virtual interactive space in Japan
Thailand launches national trade blockchain, integrates Japan’s TradeWaltz, Singapore’s NTP
QR payment linkage project launched in Vietnam and Thailand
Credit card-UPI linkage: Driving the next wave of growth in India digital payments
In a significant boost to credit penetration into the digital payments platform, government-backed RuPay credit cards can now be linked to Unified Payments Interface (UPI). This announcement by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is expected to bring the next wave of disruption in the digital payments ecosystem. Currently, users are allowed to make real-time bank transfers by linking their savings or current accounts with UPI. But with this game-changing initiative, paying via RuPay credit cards by scanning the Quick Response (QR) code is now possible. This move is expected to bring about a surge in the number of RuPay credit cards in the system and also play a role in enhancing the scope of digital payments.
Tencent Cloud introduces virtual interactive space in Japan
To address the evolving needs of businesses amid the merging of physical and digital realities, Tencent Cloud, the cloud business of global technology company Tencent, announced the launch of a one-stop solution called Virtual Interactive Space (VIS) in Japan. The newly introduced solution is aimed at supporting businesses looking to thrive in the virtual world. The VIS solution includes a rich content ecology that provides multiple scenarios such as virtual live broadcast, virtual conferences/exhibitions, digital twin and virtual concerts among others. The solution also supports a variety of creative interactive gameplay forms such as avatars, NPC dialogues, multi-person interactions, and real-time microphone connection, which greatly improves playability and scalability.
Thailand launches national trade blockchain, integrates Japan’s TradeWaltz, Singapore’s NTP
Thailand’s JSCCIB announced the first pilots for its blockchain-based National Digital Trade Platform (NDTP). It has also integrated with Japanese blockchain TradeWaltz and Singapore’s single window Networked Trade Platform (NTP). The aim of NDTP is to digitize the trade process to speed up imports and exports and improve access to trade finance for SMEs. It’s a private sector project run by three trade associations, the Thai Bankers Association, the Federation of Thai Industries and the Board of Trade. The government is involved through the Office of the Public Sector Development Commission. The first phase of NDTP involves digitizing various trade documents, such as purchase orders, invoices and packing lists using UN/CEFACT standards and transport documents, such as bills of lading and seaway bills. The authenticity of documents used on NDTP is verified because NDTP has been integrated with Thailand’s Trade Document Registry (TDR), which went live early this year, allowing banks to check for double financing of trade documents.
QR payment linkage project launched in Vietnam and Thailand
Vietnam and Thailand have officially launched the QR payment linkage project. The cross-border QR Payment Linkage between Thailand and Vietnam has been initiated by the Bank of Thailand and the State Bank of Vietnam. Participating commercial banks from both countries will both be taking part. This service enables tourists from both countries to make payments for goods and services via mobile banking applications of participating banks by scanning the standardised QR Code of both countries namely Thai QR Payment and VietQR. The service serves as a fast, convenient, and low-cost alternative payment method to enable cross-border transaction and marks an important milestone for ASEAN Payment Connectivity initiative to promote sustainable growth and regional financial development.
BLOCKCHAIN - CRYPTO - DIGITAL ASSETS - DE FI
Quant and UST join forces to push tokenisation
JP Morgan Registers Trademark For a New Cryptocurrency Wallet
Community Bank BaaS Provider Creates Private ‘Metaverse’ for Fintechs
Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade enters the metaverse
Adidas launches NFT avatar wearables
Quant and UST join forces to push tokenisation
Blockchain outfit Quant is teaming up with UST to push the adoption of institutional digital assets by offering technical integration and tokenisation services to central and commercial banks and capital markets participants. The partners say that they can help financial institutions adopt digital assets as they increasingly realise the benefits of distributed ledger technologies by issuing digital money and tokenising existing asset classes for greater settlement speed and access to new markets and clients. Quant will provide the foundational technology, with UST offering support through user interface design and integration via its sandbox. The partnership will focus on the issuance of CBDCs, digital money in the form of commercial stablecoins, and digital securities onto major distributed ledger networks
JP Morgan Registers Trademark For a New Cryptocurrency Wallet
JP Morgan has registered a trademark for a digital wallet and related cryptocurrency processing services. The trademark registration indicates that it can be applied to online services, including cryptocurrency payment processing, the electronic transfer of virtual currencies by an online community, and the exchange of virtual currencies. The trademark does not exclusively apply to crypto services. It can also be applied to other financial services, including virtual checking accounts, Automated Clearing House (ACH) payments, e-check processing, and bill payments. Currently, JP Morgan appears to be using the brand for a service that provides business subledgers.
Community Bank BaaS Provider Creates Private ‘Metaverse’ for Fintechs
Coastal Community Bank, a pioneer among banking-as-a-service providers, has introduced its own take on an interactive 3D financial world where consumers can play and sample fintech and neobank offerings. In October 2022, Coastal had a soft launch of its “Coastal World,” an immersive 3D website that promotes 11 of its fintechs and neobanks customers. The firm plans to fully launch the site in January 2023 and envisions adding more partner companies to the virtual world and expanding into financial education and eventually into live transactions. Coastal World represents a virtual expansion of the bank’s territory that has significant real-world potential. Legacy Coastal Community serves about 350,000 households in Washington State. The Coastal World universe is far larger. It consists of the total of all of the customers of the fintechs currently participating in the virtual world — approximately 5 million households. As the bank develops a functioning financial ecosystem in the marketing and play space that Coastal World is now, that would represent a 15-fold increase in potential customers. Coastal Community is in the midst of developing a data lake that will enable it to improve features like fraud protection across its entire BaaS clientele. This will be essential to enabling companies to fully take part in Coastal World as it becomes a deeper financial ecosystem. In time, blockchain technology could be incorporated into Coastal World to provide a protected method for payments.
Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade enters the metaverse
The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, annually presented by the U.S. department store, is now entering the metaverse. The virtual Parade will host five galleries of existing popular NFT collections, with the winning design to be made into a real-life Parade balloon in the 2023 Parade. The experience is accessible without needing a crypto wallet and is powered by the OnCyber metaverse. This is not the company’s first venture into web3. In 2021, it launched ten unique NFTs and 9500 parade-themed pieces to mark the 95th year of the annual Parade. Bids for the unique pieces depicting iconic balloons went for as high as $300,000, with the proceeds donated to charity
Adidas launches NFT avatar wearables
Adidas released its first blockchain-based wearable collection on the company’s metaverse website. The adidas Originals “Virtual Gear” collection features 16 pieces of apparel designed to be worn by virtual avatars and interoperable with other identity-based worlds in web3. The collection also includes three wearables from Adidas web3 partners the Bored Ape Yacht Club, Gmoney, and Punk Comics. This release follows on the heels of a previous Adidas metaverse initiative in collaboration with the Ready Player Me platform, enabling the company to launch AI-generated personality-based avatars. The platform allowed for the digital characters to travel across 1500 apps and games on the metaverse and was a key part of adidas’ strategy to allow interoperability between different standalone platforms.
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