Rapyd, a global Fintech as a Service company, has entered the Indian market with partners including Paytm, PhonePe, PayU, Citibank,...
Singapore software-as-a-service company Lenddo has announced a new data partnership with Experian to support financial inclusion in Indonesia and Vietnam; the partnership will provide data analytics technology for Experian's Consumer Financial Inclusion Indexing platform; through the combined services of Lenddo and Experian, underserved banking consumers will gain access to financial services including remittances, savings, credit and wealth management services. Source
Bloomberg reports on Wins Finance Holdings (WINS) which currently has an inception to date return of 3,305% and is trading at $230; the Chinese company has a small business loan and equipment leasing business; the stock is in the Nasdaq Composite and reports the index's highest 12-month return; while the Chinese stock appears to be a little known discovery, its business financials are rather abstract; Bloomberg provides details on the company including information from its public reports which began with its 2015 Nasdaq listing. Source
According to Hong Kong regulatory officials, two banks have applied to trial biometric technology under a recent fintech sandbox initiative; Hong Kong Monetary Authority Chief Executive Norman Chan notes that the companies want to use biometrics to authenticate securities trading; the fintech sandbox was launched in September; other banks are considering utilizing the sandbox for other areas such as blockchain and artificial intelligence. Source
Viva Repulica runs the largest fintech startup in South Korea called Toss; the company is now looking to raise $200...
Orix Corporation and its affiliate Yayoi Co., Ltd. have launched a new online lending business; the platform will focus on lending to small businesses in Japan; the service will seek to utilize big data and artificial intelligence to develop an advanced credit underwriting model for lending. Source
New York-based ConsenSys has been elected to advise the City of Dubai on the first ever blockchain city technology effort; the initiative is led by the Smart Dubai Office and IBM, the government's strategic partner; as part of the Dubai Blockchain Strategy 2020, the city of Dubai will now require all government records and transactions to be documented using blockchain technology. Source
Andy Taylor previously co-founded marketplace lending platform SocietyOne; his new venture Douugh is a personal financial app; it uses a virtual assistant called Sophie to help users manage their finances; much like other apps, users input their financial accounts; users can interact with Sophie, asking questions like "How much did I spend on food this week?"; the app will also provide context around whether the amount spent is higher than usual and also aid users in setting up spending targets; the company is in beta for the rest of the year and will officially launch in February of next year; they hope to eventually make Sophie accessible via Alexa and Siri. Source
At Lang Di Fintech (LendIt's Chinese event), Peter Renton, the founder of Lend Academy, conducted an interview with ZhongAn Insurance CEO Jeffrey Chen; they talked about how the biggest insurtech company uses big data and artificial intelligence to measure risk, the scale of ZhongAn's business, regulatory issues and the future of the company; the article provides five key takeaways from the interview. Source
Forbes has released its 30 Under 30 Asia 2017 list of top venture capitalists and fintech entrepreneurs; the list includes fintech entrepreneurs managing P2P lending platforms in India, Philippines, China and South Korea; some of the top entrepreneurs in marketplace lending include Zhang Xiaoliang, cofounder of Beijing Kuaikuai Network Technology, and Wang Zeng, founder of Mujinnong. Source