Caixin reports that China's relevant regulators will take measures on ICOs; before ICOs are included into the nation's legal framework, it cannot be ruled out that regulators will ban such activities; People's Bank of China and China Securities Regulatory Commission are now discussing the measures. Source (Chinese)
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Alibaba payment affiliate Ant Financial has announced the acquisition of helloPay; the company is based in Singapore and will help support Alipay's strategic growth initiatives in Southeast Asia; its primary payments focus is on serving e-commerce platforms; helloPay will be rebranded as Alipay following the acquisition. Source
Fox Fintech, an affiliate of Sohu.com, was able to obtain the first micro-credit license by the Ningbo City Government in China; Alex Ho, Fox Fintech Group's founder and CEO, commented, "We are applying advanced technologies in big data, facial recognition, machine learning and self-developed algorithms to bring efficient, convenient and inclusive credit service to China."; the internet micro-credit license allows for Fox Fintech to lend across the country, traditional micro-credit licenses are limited to the city where they are approved. Source
According to the Wall Street Journal, PayPal and bitcoin have been used for funding Islamic terrorist attacks in Indonesia; the virtual payments were reported to be more difficult to track; the Indonesian Financial Transactions Report and Analysis Center says terrorism financing cases have increased in the country from 12 in 2015 to 25 in 2016. Source
P2P lender China Rapid Finance has announced a partnership with Tencent's wealth management group, Licaitong; China Rapid Finance will list investments on the Licaitong platform; the product listings will include fixed-term investments ranging from nine months to 18 months with expected annualized returns ranging from 4.65% to 6.19%; the investment products reached capacity of RMB 27 million ($3.89 million) within two hours of the launch; China Rapid Finance will continue to offer investments through the Licaitong partnership; in a statement regarding the partnership, Dr. Zang Wang, CEO of China Rapid Finance, said, "This collaboration between CRF and Tencent's Licaitong platform will support the development of inclusive finance in China." Source
The new partnership aims to increase access to financial services for individuals and small businesses; according to a Chinese press release translated by TechNode, the "credit factory" (in Chinese) model is a business model mainly used for credit certification of small and micro-sized enterprises as well as individuals; loans lent to such groups are small, but are lent at high frequency; the adoption of the "credit factory" mode, thanks to its high efficiency and economies of scale in handling petty loans, can help big financial firms gain some ground lost to the country's mushrooming small loan companies in the microfinance market; an upgrade to the traditional "credit factory", Dianrong-Quark Credit Factory utilizes such fintech means as big data, anti-fraud management systems and decision engine; it can help lenders reduce manual operations, save costs and cut operational risks through its powerful quantitative system when they handle credit certification for individuals or small and micro-sized businesses. Source
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RateSetter now has over 2,000 broker dealers supporting loan originations on its platform with loans from the intermediaries doubling approximately every six months; top reasons for the borrowing from this channel include vehicle loans, home improvement and debt consolidation; firm has also lent $150 million since its launch in 2014. Source