Hi fintech friends, I'm Osborne, investor in early stage startups.

Please enjoy all the news and updates from the past week in today’s edition. If you feel TWIF brings you value, please share it with your friends (and maybe suggest they subscribe too).

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📝 Posts of the week

🇮🇳 India

📰 Market Updates

1. Fibe reported INR 1,228cr ($135M) operating revenue, growing 49% YoY in FY25, with profit rising 13%.
2. Progcap nearly doubled revenue to ₹268cr ($29.4M) in FY25, reducing losses by 87% YoY to INR 6cr ($660K).
3. Capital Small Finance Bank raised yearly growth target to 23-24% aiming to double its portfolio to INR 16,000cr ($1.7B) by March 2029.
4. Indian banks sold ₹24,814cr ($2.7bn) retail non-performing assets to Asset Reconstruction Companies in Q4 FY26, up 173% QoQ.
5. ICICI Bank, Bank of Baroda, Bank of India, Yes Bank, and IDFC First Bank transitioned to fixed-price Automated Teller Machine (ATM) management contracts instead of transaction-based arrangements.
6. Indian banks saw credit growth of 12% YoY to ₹22.3 lakh crore ($245bn) while deposits grew 10% to INR 23 lakh crore ($253bn) as of Jan, 2026 with the incremental credit-deposit ratio reaching 97%.
7. The NBFC arm of IPO-bound Kissht, received a Crisil Ratings upgrade to A-/Stable from BBB+/Stable. It had Assets Under Management (AUM) growing to ₹5,533cr ($610M) as of Sep 30, 2025.

🚀 Product Launches

1. Grip Invest partnered with HSBC India, to distribute Grip's fixed income products to HSBC's customer base.
2. Go Digit General Insurance partnered with Anvayaa Kin Care to offer policyholders access to elderly care services at preferential rates.
3. PhonePe launched biometric authentication for Unified Payments Interface (UPI) payments up to ₹5,000 ($55) for Android users.
4. PhonePe launched an AI-powered natural language search feature built with Microsoft Foundry, enabling voice and text commands for payments across India.
5. National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) launched FiMI, a domain-specific language model built for India's payments ecosystem featuring multilingual support across 10 languages and powering the UPI Help Assistant.
6. Cashfree Payments launched a UPI and biometric payment extension for AI chat apps like ChatGPT, in partnership with Mastercard and Swiggy.
7. National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) launched 'UPI One World' wallet service for foreign nationals.
8. OpenAI partnered with Pine Labs to integrate its APIs into PineLabs' payments and commerce infrastructure, automating settlement, reconciliation, and invoicing workflows.
9. Razorpay partnered with Replit to embed payment infrastructure into Replit's vibecoding platform, enabling Indian developers to monetise AI-built applications through UPI and card payments.

📝 Regulatory Updates

1. Reserve Bank of India (RBI) restored default loss guarantees (DLGs) for non-banking finance companies (NBFCs), reversing May 2025 curbs and reducing provisioning pressure.
2. Reserve Bank of India (RBI) raised External Commercial Borrowing (ECB) limits to $1bn from $750M, relaxed maturity norms, and removed cost caps.
3. Reserve Bank of India (RBI) proposed stricter loan recovery norms requiring non-banking finance companies (NBFCs) to train and certify outsourced recovery agents through Indian Institute of Banking and Finance (IIBF), implement comprehensive codes of conduct, and document all recovery calls, effective from July 1, 2026, expected to raise compliance costs for smaller NBFCs lacking in-house recovery teams.
4. Reserve Bank of India (RBI) released draft Directions requiring Authorised Dealer Category-I banks to report all foreign exchange derivative transactions involving Indian Rupee (INR) undertaken by their related parties globally to the trade repository.
5. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) finalised directions on Unique Transaction Identifier (UTI) for Over-The-Counter (OTC) derivative transactions.
6. Reserve Bank of India (RBI) approved Airtel Money to operate as a Type II Non-Banking Financial Company (NBFC), under new regulations.

💰 Financing Announcements

1. Stable Money, a passive investments startup, raised $25M.
2. Exponent ONE, a subsidiary of Exponent Energy, launched an EV financing startup, securing INR 18cr ($2 Mn).
3. Otto Money, an AI wealth management startup, raised $1.3 Mn (INR 12cr).
4. Roopya, a Lending-as-a-Service startup, raised ₹4cr ($440K).
5. ToneTag, a sound based payments startup raised and undisclosed amount.

ACQUISITIONS:

1. Muthoot Microfin explored acquiring majority stakes in two non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) operating in the micro loan against property (LAP) segment to expand its secured lending portfolio and diversify from unsecured microfinance loans

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🌏 Asia

📰 Market Updates

1. Japan experienced a historic shift in household payment methods as credit card payments outpaced cash for the first time.
2. Pakistan's mutual fund industry reached PKR 4.3tn ($15.5bn) in Assets Under Management (AUM) in Jan 2026, with equity funds surging 11% month-on-month.
3. DBS Bank piloted Visa's agentic commerce suite, enabling AI agents to complete transactions on behalf of consumers through secure, issuer-controlled flows.
4. Bank Islami in Pakistan reported profit after tax of PKR 600cr ($21.5M) in CY25, declining 49% YoY from PKR 1,183cr ($42M) in CY24, driven by lower net financing income, compressed asset yields, and a 42% surge in operating expenses.
5. Netbank in Philippines partnered with Winspire, the Philippine subsidiary of South Korea's TGS Group, launched to launch its digital payment platform CPay.
6. Sumsub launched Summy, an AI Copilot embedded across its platform to support compliance officers and fraud investigators with plain language queries and audit-ready outputs.
7. Sea in Singapore partnered with Google to develop and scale artificial intelligence (AI) applications across digital financial services, e-commerce, and gaming in Southeast Asia.
8. MoneyMe, an Australian lender, grew its loan book by 26% to $1.25bn in H2 CY25 while loses reduced to 3% and gross revenue of $82M and net interest margin of 7%.
9. NCR Atleos partnered with UnionPay allowing UnionPay cardholders to withdraw cash at thousands of ATMs across the UK.
10. Wayex, an Australian crypto payments startup, launched Wayex Global, a global USD account with Visa card access and embedded yield.
11. Standard Chartered partnered with B2C2, an institutional liquidity startup for digital assets, to launch better liquidity solutions for SC's institutional clients.
12. Lensell, an Australian stock broking company, launched StockLenz, a next-generation multi-factor stock ranking app.

💰 Financing Announcements

1. InvestStream, an Australian investment SaaS startup for the banking and AMC industry, raised an undisclosed amount.

ACQUISITIONS:

1. SBI Holdings in Japan acquired a majority stake in Coinhako, a Singapore-based digital asset platform, to expand its global digital asset corridor and strengthen its presence in Asia.

If you’ve made it this far - thanks! As always, you can always reach me at osborne@thisweekinfintech.com. I’d genuinely appreciate any and all feedback. If you liked what you read, please consider sharing or subscribing.

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