This Week in Fintech - Asia | 07th Jan, 2023

Hi fintech friends,
Happy New Year, 2023! Hope you had a great start to the year!
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Please enjoy all the news and updates from the past week in todayโs edition. If you feel TWIF brings you value, please share it with your friends (and maybe suggest they subscribe too).
Donโt forget to share with fellow fintech friends!
๐ Chart of the week

๐ฆ๐ Tweets of the Week
Visa tx count in 2021 : 255.4 billion
— Joel John (@joel_john95) December 28, 2022
Settled volume : $14 trillion
Stablecoin tx count in 2022: ~320 million
Settled voume : ~$6 trillion
Tbh - between l2's, its quite likely we have traditional payments network grade throughput to scale for b2c transactions.
'tis the season where NRIs will go back and tell tales of the east pic.twitter.com/FkAZp6IvQk
— Corporate Chat India (@anonCorpChatInd) January 3, 2023
Indian #fintech delinquencies fell to 2% in the months of June to September 2022, falling from the peak of 4.6% a year ago - shows data from the #RBI financial stability report @RBI @CIBIL_Official pic.twitter.com/pDuBBD6JSo
— Priyanka Iyer (@PriyankaIyer) December 30, 2022
๐ฎ๐ณ India
๐ฐ Market Updates
- RBI's Financial Stability Report proposed to take a "common approach" to regulating crypto.
- CRED stopped placing Paytm's logo on its offline QR code acceptance placards at merchant stores.
- Customer complaints against debit cards and ATM cards have shrunk due to increased use of UPI while complaints for credit cards and other loans has increased.
- Walmart is likely to face$1bn in taxes for shifting PhonePe's base from Singapore to India.
๐ Product Launches
- Unocoin, a cryptocurrency exchange, announced a partnership with Binocs, a cryptocurrency taxation management company.
- Actyv.AI, a B2B SaaS platform, partnered with Ratnaafin, an NBFC, to launch B2B BNPL product.
- Open, a small business neobanking startup, partnered with Axis Bank, to launch neo banking for small businesses.
๐ Regulatory Updates
- RBI (central bank): Released the Annual report for Ombudsman Scheme for 2021-2022. Released the list of 6 entities selected to be part of the fourth Sandbox cohort on Prevention and Mitigation of Financial Frauds.
๐ฐ Financing Announcement
- KreditBee, a consumer credit startup, raised $100mm.
- InsuranceDekho, an insurance product aggregator startup, raised $36.5mm.
- SarvaGram, a rural fintech startup, raised $35mm.
- Fello, a gaming-based savings startup, raised $4mm.
- Jupiter, a neo banking startup, raised $12mm (debt).
- Varthana, an education finance startup, raised $7mm (debt).
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๐ Asia
๐ฐ Market Updates
- UnionPay, a Shanghai-based card acceptance company, issued more than 200mm cards outside the Chinese mainland.
- ChiChaPay, a Singaporean crypto startup, launched a digital wallet that processes both fiat and cryptocurrencies.
- Ant Group received approval from Chinese regulators to raise $1.5bn.
- Indonesia's financial authority is planning a national crypto exchange in 2023.
- Aigis, an Indonesia-based B2B insurtech startup, pivoted to provide project management and fintech solutions for the creative industry through a platform called Finnix.
- Smartpay, a Japanese fintech startup, launched Smartpay Bank Direct, a BNPL product.
- BitKeep, a Singaporean crypto wallet company, suffered a hack where $8mm in user deposits were stolen.
- TAG Fintech, a Pakistani payments startup, is planning to enter other markets in Asia and Middle East.
๐ฐ Financing Announcements
(there was no funding announcement this week. Did I miss anything? please let me know.)
๐ International
Please find our global coverage and consider subscribing.
- US and Global, written by Nik Milanovic.
- Europe and UK, written by Michael Jenkins.
- Latin America, written by Christine Chang.
- Africa, written by Emeka Ajene.
- China written by Ning Ye.
- Policy written by Mohammad Hamdy.
And of course, our podcast series - Beyond Two Percent and Hey Fintech Friends.
If youโve made it this far - thanks! As always, you can always reach me at osborne@thisweekinfintech.com. Iโd genuinely appreciate any and all feedback. If you liked what you read, please consider sharing or subscribing.
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