What The FinTech #122 - 4 Dec 2022
Happy Sunday & Welcome back to What The FinTech, your regular FinTech & Innovation Newsletter focusing on Hong Kong & Asia!
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What The FinTech Video & Podcast - Episode 47
Last Wednesday, Julio Orr and Oscar Venhuis of Happyer held a fascinating discussion about their cutting-edge career platform for modern job seekers and in-demand skills platform to transform careers.
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What was the FinTech this week in: 📰
HONG KONG
70% of Hong Kong banking customers want a better online experience
HK payments infra startup XanPool bags US$41M to expand into emerging markets
70% of Hong Kong banking customers want a better online experience
Hong Kong consumer confidence in digital banking is rising but trust is no longer a bank monopoly. 707 Hong Kong consumers to gauge their attitudes to banking services at a time of rapid change in the retail banking industry. The findings form part of a larger survey of nearly 5,000 consumers across five markets in the Asia-Pacific region. No less than 86% of the Hong Kong consumers surveyed say they would now trust 'Big Tech' to fulfil their banking services as much as or more than they would a bank –with 56% saying they would trust 'Big Tech' more. Hong Kong want a better online banking experience fromtheir providers and more visibility across banking products. Most (61%) say they are at least willing to think about sharing personal data to drive a greater personalization of products. More than sixty percent (64%) of consumers would find it 'extremely'or 'very' attractive to have an app that gave them better visibility and more personalized insights into all their financial products, such as bank accounts, pensions, insurance, and investment.Most consumers are open to the idea of unlocking personalization by sharing more personal data, such as social media profiles and wearables data, with 22% expressing enthusiasm and a further 39% saying they were willing to consider it.
HK payments infra startup XanPool bags US$41M to expand into emerging markets
Hong Kong-based cross-border payments infrastructure startup XanPool has raised US$41 million, led by existing investor Target Global. XanPool will use the funds to accelerate expansion plans across Europe, the Middle East, North Africa and Latin America. It will also establish a research and development hub in Thailand.The firm, which supports crypto and fiat currencies, claims it has grown to have 2 million users and has partnered with crypto companies such as Binance, Bitcoin.com, and Bybit.
SINGAPORE
SKT, Singtel sign metaverse MoU
Experian to run Singapore’s new BNPL credit bureauto tackle credit stacking
UK and Singapore ink fintech MoU
AWS powered Trust bank to onboard more than 300,000 users in Two months
SKT, Singtel sign metaverse MoU
SK Telecom (SKT) has signed an MoU with Singtel to grow the metaverse businesses where both operate, starting with Singapore. Singtel will share its 5G and technology expertise with SKT across Asia-Pacific while SKT will provide insights from its metaverse platform, ifland, in Korea as part of the MOU. This will involve the development of virtual versions of places in Singapore, customised avatars of locals, and the organisation of exclusive events for Singtel customers. The two companies say they will also explore collaborative opportunities in areas such as quantum cryptography or advanced data encryption to build safer networks against emerging threats.
Experian to run Singapore’s new BNPL credit bureau to tackle credit stacking
Experian has been appointed to operate Singapore's buy now, pay later credit bureau, providing firms with creditworthiness checks on consumer BNPL debt. The appointment was made by the Singapore Fintech Association and the BNPL Working Group, which has created a code of conduct that sets out guidance for BNPL service providers in Singapore to protect consumers from racking up debt by taking on multiple loans. Under the arrangement, Experian will operate a BNPL bureau in Singapore with all accredited players sharing users’ credit information -such as outstanding BNPL balances, missed payments and delinquencies -with the aim of tackling the issue of credit stacking among BNPL users.
UK and Singapore ink fintech MoU
The UK and Singapore have agreed to a new MoU boosting fintech trade and cooperation at their 7th Financial Dialogue in Singapore. The UK and Singapore agree on a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on the UK-Singapore FinTech Bridge to remove barriers to fintech trade and boost cooperation. This will deepen engagement between businesses, and regulators, adding to previous cooperation. Policymakers from both the UK and Singapore will meet regularly with the fintech sector to work to remove regulatory barriers to trade. The Fintech Bridge builds on an agreement signed in 2016 –which will remove barriers to FinTech trade by opening new regular talks between regulators and businesses, in addition to previous areas of cooperation. This will increase the cooperation and sharing of information on emerging trends in the fintech sector. It will also break down barriers to trade for UK and Singaporean fintechs, boosting growth and investment opportunities.
AWS powered Trust bank to onboard more than 300,000 users in Two months
Amazon Web Services (AWS) Singapore, an Amazon.com company, has been powering Singapore’s built-in-the cloud digitally-native bank Trust to onboard more than 300,000 customers in two months. Through the partnership with AWS, Trust has the agility to rapidly improve its offerings based on customer feedback, and the scalability to support its fast-growing customer base. AWS also enabled it to offer a simple user interface and onboarding times of less than three minutes for a savings account and less than four minutes for a credit card. Trust has launched its numberless credit card that allows customers to switch between credit and debit card on the app for dual account holders, removing the need for users to carry multiple cards. The bank added that it is building innovative digital products on AWS, including an in-app spend tracker that allows real-time tracking of Linkpoints earned. Linkpoints are loyalty points accumulated with every spend at FairPrice and other Link partners, which customers can then redeem to offset their purchases with instant dollar savings.
CHINA
Tencent and Alibaba’s AI models speak Chinese better with improved NLP technology
Baidu unveils Ambitious Robotaxi plan in China
Tencent and Alibaba’s AI models speak Chinese better with improved NLP technology
An Artificial intelligence model, released by Tencent Holdings and Alibaba Group Holding, as per a benchmark test measuring natural language processing, can understand Chinese better than a human being. The Chinese Language Understanding Evaluation (CLUE) benchmark, is set based on tasks that calibrate a machine’s ability to understand and respond to Chinese text in the same way as humans do. Tencent’s and Alibaba’s AI models scored high in the evaluation. It is the first time that an AI model has defeated humans ever since researchers succeeded in creating this benchmark three years ago. By and large English translated Chinese is a kind of continuous bag of words that requires only an MLM (Masked Language Model), a common pre-training model for machine translation. It essentially recovers a few input tokens in the vocabulary space by replacing them with masking tokens, [MASK]. Though the output has a simple formulation, it can fairly represent the contextual information around the masked token. The meaning of the sentence can be understood even though certain words in the statement are disorganized. The current NLP models are the refined version giving the model the ability to identify the context.
Baidu unveils Ambitious Robotaxi plan in China
Baidu, the search engine sometimes called the Google of China, announced more of its robotaxi plans, including what it claims will be the largest no-safety-driver robotaxi service area in the world in 2023. Permits to remove all safety drivers are rare in China and teams there often report they are fully self-driver when they have an employee in the car, just not in the passenger seat. Without providing numbers of location, they stated the service area will expand greatly next year. They operate with safety drivers in 10 cities in China. Robotaxi operations are also underway with AutoX, WeRide, Pony.AI and Didi at various levels of service and removal of safety drivers.Baidu’s move to 10 cities backs up their claim that they have worked hard at making it easy to expand the territory of their systems. They now claim they canbring up a new city in just 20 days. This is done through systems to automate map generation —they report that their automated systems generate 96% of their maps, reducing the workload for humans in finishing them. This is combined with real-time updates, as used by teams. Similar systems help them process the large volumes of data they gather to filter down to what will be input to their training sets for their AI models. Unlike other teams like Waymo, Cruise, Zoox and more, Baidu is also working to export some of their robocar advancements into an ADAS-pilot system.Baidu has also, like Tesla, MobilEye and (indirectly) Waymo developed their own custom AI hardware and has spun out a subsidiary to produce their AI accelerator.
ASIA
ICICI Bank launches new digital lending platform iLens
TipTip uses a hyperlocal strategy to help Southeast Asian creators monetize
Equinix enters Malaysia, commits $40m to building data center in Johor
2C2P and Pine Labs to expand buy now pay later acceptance in Southeast Asia
CloudMile: supercharging Malaysia’sdigital economy on three fronts
In APAC, financial services firms will look to new drivers of growth amidst uncertainty in 2023
ICICI Bank launches new digital lending platform iLens
Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and ICICI Bank on Tuesday announced the launch of ‘iLens’, a digital lending solution, powered by the TCS lending platform. The platform digitises the entire lending process— from application to disbursement— for users. The launch aims to offer customers faster turnaround of loan applications, greater transparency of loan status and enriched experience. To begin, iLens has started offering customers, including new-to-bank individuals, to avail housing loans in a completely digital process. This includes onboarding through paperless login, uploading documents, receiving instant sanctions, appraising properties, and disbursement of loans. ICICI Bank plans to offer other retail loans such as personal, auto and credit cards on this platform.
TipTip uses a hyperlocal strategy to help Southeast Asian creators monetize
Indonesia-based TipTip was founded in October 2021 and serves as a marketplace for creators to connect with fans, and monetize content like videos and documents by selling them to their followers, or hosting live video sessions. TipTip was created for people like local chefs, musicians and painters, who have few followers and need to build their audiences. To enable them to scale and monetize, TipTip uses a hyperlocal strategy in Indonesian cities and towns, helping them host events and activities tailored to their communities. TipTip differentiates from social media platforms with an end-to-end solution for creators that includes digital content management and distribution, livestreaming services, one-on-one interactions, and direct tipping. Its platform also helps creators with administrative issues, like audience management, know your customer (KYC), payment systems and scheduling. Instead of ads, TipTip provides direct monetization channels through tipping and direct purchases and takes a cut from every sale on its platform. The startup has just closed a $13 million Series A funding round. Part of the proceeds to create more product offerings like podcasts, branding deals and personalized requests to provide creators with more potential revenue channels.
Equinix enters Malaysia, commits $40m to building data center in Johor
Equinix, a publicly-listed digital infrastructure company, has entered Malaysian markets and plans to invest $40 million in a new data center called JH1. The facility would be located in Johor, the country's capital, which is home to more than 2.5 million people.The multi-million investment is scheduled to begin operations in 2024, supporting local companies and businesses with International Business Exchange (IBX) data center. Equinix wants to tap the potential of Malaysia's digital economy, which is expected to be worth $34 billion by 2025. Local companies will gain the opportunity for international growth, while foreign investors will be able to develop their businesses in the local market.
2C2P and Pine Labs to expand buy now pay later acceptance in Southeast Asia
2C2P, a global payments platform and leading merchant commerce omnichannel platform Pine Labs have partnered to expand Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) across Asia in six key markets, namely Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand.Unlike other BNPL offerings, Pine Labs works with issuing banks to enable cardholders of participating issuing banks to purchase items with multiple and longer instalment tenures, without having to download any mobile application or subscribe to any additional e-wallet or payment services. Cardholders will be able to make instant instalment payments at checkout up to their pre-approved credit limit with no interest charge. This partnership is expected to boost consumer confidence in the region and empowerretail merchants to sell more and sell often to their customers. Pine Labs' BNPL strategy has a strong track record in India and has now expanded into various Southeast Asian markets. Since its launch in Singapore, Pine Labs Pay Later has emerged as a flexible payment option for merchants across a variety of verticals, including retail and tech, counting the likes of Eu Yan Sang, Samsung, OPPO, and more as its clients.
CloudMile: supercharging Malaysia’sdigital economy on three fronts
CloudMile, a leading cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) company in Asia, is strengthening its commitment to the Malaysian market to support local organizations and industries to unlock the value of their data.CloudMile’s efforts include the company’s rapid expansion plan in Malaysia, pioneering new services built on Google Cloud infrastructure, and contributing to the development of tech talent.As part of its commitment to the Malaysian market, CloudMile plans to grow its local workforce by five times in the next three years, aiming to strengthen its technology capabilities and customer services, especially for financial services, manufacturing industries, Government-linked companies (GLCs) and large conglomerates. It is hiring and developing local talent to make Malaysia a CloudMile regional Center of Excellence for managed services, support and research and development. As one of Google’s leading Cloud Managed Service Provider (MSP) partner in Malaysia, CloudMile is ideally positioned to help local companies and public agencies take advantage of the newly established Google Cloud region in Malaysia, enabling them to benefit from high-performance and low-latency services through closer proximity of digital infrastructure and applications. CloudMile transforms this new offering from a capital expenditures (CapEx) model to a subscription-based service so that enterprises can enjoy more flexible and efficient cloud services. The solution is supported by CloudMile’s professional cloud management and consultancy team in Malaysia and delivered entirely as a service, further helping to reduce costs and maximize uptime.
In APAC, financial services firms will look to new drivers of growth amidst uncertainty in 2023
For APAC financial services firms, the good old days of low interest rates driving exponential loan growth, specifically for mortgages, are now long gone.In 2023, APAC financial services firms will brace for tougher geopolitical and economic conditions brought on by the ongoing war in Ukraine, record-high inflation, and rising interest rates. In 2023, APAC cross-border commerce will grow rapidly despite the global economic downturn. Forrester predicts that RCEP (the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership) and regional payment networks will help to boost cross-border commerce by 20%. Modern cross-border payment networks are poised to play a bigger role than the 50-year-old SWIFT system in processing some of the regional cross-border transactions. In 2023, many APAC financial services firms will launch new green finance products and experiences such as green loans and CO2 trackers as part of their organization’s broader environmental, social, and governance (ESG) efforts. But at least 50 firms in APAC will be penalized for performative ESG efforts, with the majority being financial services firms. Values-based consumers are forcing firms to publicly commit to ESG efforts, but pressure to act quickly will lead some to misrepresent or overstate their actions. Offenders could face penalties of US$10 million or more as APAC regulators follow in the footsteps of their US and European counterparts and clamp down on misleading ESG claims. The Australian Securities and Investments Commission is already investigating firms for greenwashing. Firms also face brand damage from bad press and negative word of mouth: In 2022, companies celebrating International Women’s Day on social media had their own gender pay gaps publicly exposed.
BLOCKCHAIN - CRYPTO - DIGITAL ASSETS - DE FI
Goldman Sachs unveils digital asset platform with EIB €100m blockchain bond
Binance launches proof-of-reserves system for BTC holdings
Goldman Sachs unveils digital asset platform with EIB €100m blockchain bond
Goldman Sachs has launched its digital asset tokenization platform, GS DAP, with the issuance of a €100 million ($104m) digital bond for the European Investment Bank (EIB) on the private GS blockchain. This is EIB’s second digital bond, and as with the previous bond, Goldman, Santander, Société Générale and the Banque de France were involved. The 2-year syndicated bond issuance was settled instantly in a delivery versus payment transaction that used experimental central bank digital currency (CBDC) tokens issued by the Banque de France. The bond and the CBDC tokens live on different blockchains.
Binance launches proof-of-reserves system for BTC holdings
Cryptocurrency exchange company Binance has released a new site that explains its proof-of-reserves system. The company is starting with BTC reserves. Right now, Binance has a reserve ratio of 101%. It means that the company has enough bitcoins to cover all users’ balances. Crypto companies — and crypto exchanges in particular — have been trying to be more transparent about user funds since then. It means sharing more information about hot and cold wallets. A few weeks ago, Binance started by sharing wallet addresses with billions of dollars worth of crypto assets. With this move, the company proved that it does indeed hold a lot of assets and it can process a ton of withdrawals. But the company didn’t state clearly whether those are user assets, or Binance’s own balance sheet, or a mix of both. With today’s new proof-of-reserves site, Binance clarified that point by saying that BTC wallets included in the proof-of-reserves system don’t include Binance’s own funds. Binance is starting with BTC holdings. Adding up the amounts in each of Binance’s wallet is easy. When it comes to user assets, the company is using a Merkle tree to include all individual user accounts and generate a cryptographic seal. Thanks to the Merkle tree, individual users can use the root hash to check whether their accounts are included in the snapshot of user balances.
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