Mumbai Fintech Happy Hour is back | TWIF Asia & India

Financial sector robust: Rural Banks profit +49% ($1bn), SIDBI +14% ($576M); 1.26M new credit cards added.

Digital payments expand: Cashfree AI for SMBs; payments firm Paramotor got SEBI IPO nod.

Fraud concerns: Lending fraud quadrupled to $5bn; RBI adjusted NRI deposit norms, Citi/Axis partner for NRI deposits.

Stablecoins & AI advance: Fasset raised $68M ($1B val); Visa/Nium/SCB pilot stablecoins; HK's GenAI Sandbox.

Digital wealth/payments grow: Ajaib raised $270M; Mynt's GStocks hit 2M users; Indonesia QRIS +82.4%.

Regulatory watch: BSP led task force on scams/AI; Vietnam mandated crypto transaction reporting.

StashAway, Singapore-based robo-advisor, acquired MakeGoodwill, an online will-drafting platform, to offer legacy planning services.

Citigroup partnered with Axis Bank to finance Non-Resident Indian (NRI) foreign-currency deposits, mobilising $72bn through August 2026.

RuPay launched Tiny Talkies, an original microdrama intellectual property, and unveiled its first show 'Sarva Groom Sampanna'.

Cashfree Payments launched Relay, an AI Super-Agent reducing SMB payment operations from 60 hours to under 45 minutes weekly, targeting ₹20,000cr ($2.2B) annual GMV recovery.

Credolab, a Southeast Asian behavioural risk scoring and alternative data platform, partnered with FICO to integrate behavioural credit intelligence into FICO Marketplace, enabling lenders across 80 countries to assess applicants with limited bureau data.

Visa and Nium piloted stablecoin settlements under Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) BLOOM initiative to enable 24/7 payments.

Standard Chartered Bank distributed HKDAP stablecoin issued by Anchorpoint Financial for institutional clients' treasury and cross-border payments.

United Overseas Bank (UOB) and HSBC completed live Hong Kong dollar (HKD) cross-border transactions on Swift's blockchain-based ledger, planning Singapore dollar (SGD) and US dollar (USD) transactions by September 2026.

Visa and Bank of China (Hong Kong) partnered to test agent-initiated commerce in GenA.I. Sandbox++, enabling secure AI-powered transactions.

Ajaib, an Indonesian stock broking startup, raised $270M.

Fasset, a Dubai-based AI-powered stablecoin neobanking startup, raised $68M at a $1 billion valuation.

Nexedge Capital, an Indian wealth management startup, raised ₹182cr ($20M).

StoreHub, a Malaysian commerce and payments company, raised an undisclosed amount.

Philippines' central bank Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) joined 11 regional central banks to establish a task force combating financial scams and managing artificial intelligence risks in July 2026.

Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA), Securities and Futures Commission (SFC), Insurance Authority (IA), and Mandatory Provident Fund Schemes Authority (MPFA) selected 36 agentic AI use cases involving 30 financial institutions and 27 technology partners for GenAI Sandbox++.

Reserve Bank of India (RBI) amended Cash Reserve Ratio (CRR) and Statutory Liquidity Ratio (SLR) exemptions for Foreign Currency Non-Resident (FCNR(B)) and Non-Resident External (NRE) deposits, advancing deadline to August 31, 2026.

India added 1.26M credit cards in July 2026, with spending rising 7.4% YoY to ₹2.08 lakh crore ($22bn).

Paramotor Digital Technology, an Indian payments company, received SEBI's approval for its Initial Public Offering (IPO).

Regional Rural Banks (RRBs) posted consolidated net profit of ₹10,200 crore ($1bn) in FY26, up 49% YoY.

Small Industries Development Bank of India (Sidbi) reported net profit of ₹5,500 crore ($576M) in FY26, growing 14% YoY, with loans growing 17% YoY to ₹5.79 lakh crore ($60bn).

Suspected lending fraud in India grew to ₹48K cr ($5bn) in FY26, growing 4x from ₹12K cr ($1.3bn) in FY24.

CommBank’s venture-scaling arm X15 Ventures launched PaidIt to help organisations simplify payouts

Stablecoin card spending crossed $11n as the sector matures, with RedotPay highlighted as a key player.

Digital wallets in South Korea forecast to grow from 35% to 46% e-commerce market share by 2030, surpassing credit cards.

United Overseas Bank (UOB) Hong Kong tied wholesale, private banking, treasury, investment banking, and advisory services to target companies expanding into Mainland China and Southeast Asia, planning threefold increase in private banking advisers by 2030.

Novatti and HuePay, Australian payments companies, signed a partnership agreement to advance payment innovation across Australia and New Zealand.

Deloitte projected Asia Pacific's financial services contribution to grow to $4.8tn by 2035, requiring massive infrastructure and energy investments.

Bank Indonesia reported Quick Response Code Indonesian Standard (QRIS) grew 82.4% YoY in July 2026, with digital payment volumes reaching $310,000.

Boost Bank in Malaysia partnered with Parkson Credit to expand digital financial services across the country.

DBS and Stripe partnered to enable AI-powered cross-border payments across Asia.

Mynt, a Philippine payments company, scaled its GStocks stock trading platform via GCash to become the country’s largest online retail stock-investing platform, serving over 2M users and accounting for more than half of all online retail stock accounts with the PSE

Vietnam mandated that crypto service providers must report suspicious transactions to the central bank.