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).

Expect a lot of regulatory announcements this month in the run up to India's Global Fintech Fest.

Interact with the rest of our TWIF community on Slack - join now - India and Southeast Asia.

🧐🏆 Posts of the Week

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A thread on Credit on UPI - Will it be a game-changer in unlocking faster credit? Can you recall the first time you made a payment using any UPI app? If you think back, you'll realize that UPI was introduced in India on April 11, 2016. Today, UPI contributes 75% of all digital…— Sachin Bansal (@_sachinbansal) August 2, 2024

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Have you ever wondered how much gold Indian households possess compared to the government's reserves? The answer might surprise you. Indian households are estimated to hold around 27,000 tonnes of gold, which dwarfs the country's official reserves of 803.5 tonnes held by the RBI.…— Swaminathan Padmanabhan (@swaminathankp) July 30, 2024

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GitHub – which is making over $1B in ARR – is just starting to collect sales tax.

Let that sink in. pic.twitter.com/7dE3A6fXqi— Steven Tey (@steventey) June 17, 2024

(Note: Neither TWIF nor I endorse any views in the tweets highlighted above.)

📈 Chart of the Week

Source: NSE - Indian Capital Markets: Transformative shifts achieved through technology and reforms

🇮🇳 India

📰 Market Updates

  1. RBIreportedly approved three bidders i.e. Fairfax Financial, Emirates NBD and Kotak Bank, for the majority stake sale in government owned IDBI Bank.

  2. Public sector banksearned INR 2,331cr ($278mn) from users for non-maintenance of average balance requirements in FY24.

  3. Banks are dealing with a 7 year backlog of over 200K debt recovery cases with the Debt Recovery Tribunals.

  4. A ransomware attack on C-Edge Technologies, a JV between TCS and SBI Bank, hit bank services of 200-300 small cooperative and rural banks.

  5. NPCIdisconnected and then relaunched all forms of retail payment services offered by C-Edge Technologies after the company faced a ransomware attack.

  6. RBIreleased a report stating that India's real time payments systems account for a 48.5% share of the global real time payments volume.

  7. Bybit, the world's second largest crypto exchange, launched Digital Rupee (eRupee) a new payment method for INR users.

  8. UPI payments value crossed INR 20tn ($238bn) in the month of July, 2024.

  9. SEBI (securities regulator) Chaipersonsaid the regulator is working on a few initiatives including: introducing ASBA-like (escrow) system for secondary market transactions; reducing the minimum investment amount in mutual funds from INR 500 to INR 250.

  10. AngelOne, a stock broking company, infused INR 250cr ($30mn) into AngelOne Wealth, its wealth management arm.

  11. ONDClaunched Interoperable QR for sellers to generate QR codes for their stores that can be scanned on any ONDC registered buyer apps.

🚀 Product Launches

  1. SWIFT Internationalpartnered withAxis Bank to launch a pilot for an AI powered fraud management tool for cross border payments.

  2. Paytmlaunched a NFC payment enabled sound box.

📝 Regulatory Updates

  1. RBI (central bank):

    1. Issued guidelines for Payment System Operators to build and manage systems for cyber security risks.

    2. Released draft framework for additional factor of authentication for payments.

    3. Amazon Pay, Adyen, Billdesk and others received RBI approval to operate as cross border payment service providers.

    4. Levied a fine of $288K on Visa for using an unauthorised payment transfer method.

    5. Released draft guidelines for due diligence to be conducted on Aadhaar Enabled Payment System touchpoint operators.

  2. IRDAI (insurance):

    1. ApprovedInsuranceDekho's composite insurance broking license application to operate as a reinsurer and insurance broker.

💰 Financing Announcements

  1. Clix Capital, a small business finance company, raised $26.3mn.

  2. Vayana Network, a supply chain finance startup, raised $20.5mn.

  3. Square Insurance, an insurance broking startup, raised $3mn.

  4. Vitra, a GenAI startup for translation solutions, raised an undisclosed amount.

  5. CogniQuest, a document processing startup, raised an undisclosed amount.

  6. BharatPeraised $10mn in debt.

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🌏 Asia

📰 Market Updates

  1. Ping Pong, a Chinese cross border payments company, received a Payment Service Provider license by Bank Indonesia, the country's central bank, to operate as a cross border payments provider.

  2. Qashier, a Southeast Asian POS payment provider, launched QashierPay, a soundbox POS acceptance product to prevent payment fraud.

  3. GoTopartnered withTikTok's ShopTokopedia to launch a BNPL product.

  4. Niumlaunched a Local Currency account services product for local funding support in 40+ countries.

  5. Fingular, a Singaporean neobank, reported that its Malaysian arm turned profitable within 9 months from launch.

💰 Financing Announcements

  1. Mynt, a Philippine e-wallet company and owner of GCash, raised $393mn at a $5bn valuation.

  2. Aleta Planet, a Singaporean cross border payments startup, raised an undisclosed amount.

ACQUISITION:

  1. M-DAQ, a Singaporean fintech group, acquiredEasy Pay Transfers, a Malaysian B2B payments company.

  2. OCBC Singaporecompleted the acquisition of Bank Commonwealth in Indonesia.

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