Artificial intelligence company, Flamingo, has listed on the Australian Securities Exchange and partnered with online lender, DirectMoney; the company seeks to help increase the sales conversion rate of online customers through web chat, web forms and artificial intelligence that guides customers through an online purchase. Source
In 2015 JD Finance recommended using the term "fintech" and in December of 2016 Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba, coined "techfin"; the use of techfin showed Ant Financial's focus on building technology instead of products; the article explores whether the two concepts of fintech and techfin are actually different and the business models of JD Finance and Ant Financial. Source
At a financial forum in Shanghai, Jack Ma of Alibaba expressed his support for fintech innovation in digital banking that could further help China's inclusive finance efforts; the holding company founder's comments were centered around the capabilities of its affiliate Ant Financial, which offers a range of digital banking services; Jack Ma said capabilities from the platform could help other fintech firms to increase their financial inclusion business efforts; "We would like to entirely share with partners our capability of data collection and data processing to jointly develop the inclusive financial system," said Jack Ma; as a proponent for financial inclusion and fintech industry growth Jack Ma also said Ant Financial was a leading fintech market platform capable of partnering with other fintech companies for overall industry expansion. Source
Asia fintech specialist Henri Arslanian from PricewaterhouseCoopers provides insight on Asia's fintech market; innovation and rapid adoption are factors that have helped China to be a global leader in fintech; support from Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent continue to be drivers of infrastructure growth; in Asia, demonetization and the India Stack project, which includes biometric data for consumers, are also increasingly helping the region's fintech growth; regtech is also an increasingly important trend across the region. Source
Bitkan, a China-based bitcoin-focused data and trading services provider, has released the trailer of the first Chinese bitcoin documentary, "Shape the Future"; the documentary will provide a panoramic view of the development of the bitcoin and blockchain ecosystem in China, the country with the number one hashrate in the bitcoin realm. Source
Ping An Insurance Group's online lender Lufax reported that it is now profitable and is hoping to keep that trend for the rest of the year; "Lufax's development is extremely robust. It actually turned around in the first half. We are very confident that it could stay profitable for the full-year," said Jessica Tan Sin-Yin, Ping An's chief operating officer and chief information officer, during the Chinese insurance group's earnings announcement; Lufax is the largest P2P lending platform in China with $225 billion of outstanding loans; according to their latest funding round in January the company is valued at $18.5 billion with 43% being held by Ping An; the company is planning to go public soon and according to CEO Gregory Gibb they have done a lot of homework for Hong Kong ahead of the potential listing. Source
China's major bitcoin exchanges halted trading on Friday, January 13 and the platforms are updating their trading terms; some have yet to reopen and others are operating with trading restraints, reports CoinDesk; the changes follow discussions between Chinese bitcoin exchanges and regulator People's Bank of China. Source
Paytm is looking to expand beyond their Indian roots and Canada is their first test case; “Paytm Canada is our beta test, or our warhead to get an entry into new geography beyond India,” said founder and CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma to TearSheet; while their bill pay products help top build customers their big revenue driver is when businesses pay them fees to accept payments; the current test case in Canada has Paytm signing up thousands of Canadian companies where they incentivize customers to pay bills with cash back offers; having a large Indian population in Canada has helped the company gain early success, but expanding to markets like the US is a different type of challenge. Source.
Chinese conglomerate HNA has reported it will buy a 25% stake in Old Mutual's US asset management unit; HNA will pay approximately $445 million; following the sale, Old Mutual will own 26% of the US asset management business, a decrease from 51%; Old Mutual is expected to also sell the remaining portion of the company with a number of offers from strategic buyers and private equity groups; HNA has been increasingly adding financial services companies to its portfolio with recent acquisitions including Deutsche Bank and Anthony Scaramucci's SkyBridge Capital. Source
CB Insights outlines five tech giants' notable investments, partnerships and M&A moves in the Southeast Asia region; the five tech giants included in the article are Alibaba, Ant Financial, Tencent, Didi Chuxing and JD.com; the article highlights Ant Financial's investments in Singapore, Thailand, Philippines and Malaysia, as well as its strategic partnerships throughout Southeast Asia. Source