This Week in Fintech - Asia | 01st May, 2022

Hi fintech friends,

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).

✨ Fintech Happy Hour

We hosted an incredible fintech happy hour in Delhi NCR this past week. The thriving fintech community in Delhi NCR didn’t disappoint. Was so excited host this and will definitely be coming back soon!

Special thanks to Priyanka, founder of Falcon and Pearl, founder of Eximius Ventures for organising everything on the ground. I literally just showed up.

Thanks also to our awesome sponsors in Falcon, Eximius Ventures, Pazcare and BharatX.

If you’d like to sponsor future happy hours, please email me at osborne@thisweekinfintech.com

Editor’s Note: If you’re an early-stage startup founder raising equity, I may be able to help - reach out to osborne@thisweekinfintech.com.

Want to be a This Week in Fintech - Asia Sponsor? Email me at sponsor@thisweekinfintech.com or see our sponsorship information here.

🦉🏆 Tweets of the Week

🇮🇳 India

📰 Market Updates

• Cashfree Payments claimed 50% market share in the bulk payments market in India.
• WhatsApp plans a cashback program for its payments made by retail and business customers.
• TransUnion CIBIL released a report claiming that 160mm Indians are credit underserved and about 50% of India’s population is credit unserved at the end of 2021.
• CoinSwitch Kuber re-enabled rupee deposit after a two week freeze.
• SEBI is expected to soon be integrated with the Account Aggregator (AA) platform enabling mutual fund data to be included in the scope of AA.

🚀 Product Launches

• FidyPay, a fintech API startup, partnered with YES Bank to launch SME based products.
• KreditBee launched KreditBee 24K Gold, a digital gold investment product in partnership with SafeGold.
• ICICI Bank launched a digital ecosystem of banking products aimed at small businesses.

💰 Financing Announcements

• Turtlemint, a SaaS platform for agent-led insurance distribution, raised $120mm.
• Zenda, an India and Dubai-based startup offering school fee payment credit, raised $9.4mm.

ACQUISITION:

• CredAvenue acquired Corpository, a credit underwriting SaaS platform for $13mm.

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🌏 Asia

📰 Market Updates

• Luno, a global cryptocurrency startup, received an in-principle approval from MAs to launch crypto services.
• Revolut received MAS approval to launch crypto trading services.
• Bank Alfalah, a Pakistani bank, and Pakistan Freelancers Association partnered to launch digital payments and collections infrastructure for freelancers in the country.
• An Alibaba-owned BNPL startup is planning to launch BNPL in Pakistan and Bangladesh.
• Grab and SEA owned groups received digital banking licenses in Malaysia.

💰 Financing Announcements

• Trusting Social, a Singaporean credit scoring startup, raised $65mm.
• Brick, an Indonesian fintech API startup, raised $8.5mm.
• Payd, a Malaysian earned wage access startup, raised $1.7mm.
• Funding Societies, a South East Asian SME finance startup, invested in Bank Index, a local Indonesian bank.

ACQUISITION:

• Nium, a global fintech infrastructure startup, acquired SoCash, a Singaporean alternate payments startup that converts cash to digital payments.

🌏 International

Please find our global coverage and consider subscribing.

• US and Global, written by Nik Milanovic published on Friday’s and Saturday’s.
• Europe and UK, written by Michael Jenkins published on Monday’s.
• Latin America, written by Christine Chang.
• Africa, written by Benjamin Dada.

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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