The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) together with the major banks and HKMC Insurance Limited (HKMCI) met representatives from the commercial sector (including Members of the Legislative Council) today to exchange views on the effectiveness of banks’ measures to support SMEs and discuss future follow up work in this regard. At the meeting, the HKMA reported that, since the establishment of the Banking Sector SME Lending Coordination Mechanism in October 2019, the banking industry has introduced several rounds of measures to help corporate and retail customers. Nearly 9,000 applications from SMEs involving principal repayment holidays, loan extensions and relief loans…

Diginex, a digital asset financial services and advisory company, has hired financial services stalwart Mr. Chi-Won Yoon as Chairman of Asia. Mr. Yoon has more than three decades of experience in financial services, with a career that has spanned investment banking, wealth management and asset management. Mr. Yoon’s most recent role prior to Diginex was Vice Chairman of UBS Wealth Management, responsible for developing and enhancing long-term strategic relationships. Mr. Yoon announced his retirement from UBS last year, after 22 years with the firm. During his tenure, Mr. Yoon served as President and CEO of UBS AG, Asia Pacific, and…

Airstar one of Hong Kong’s new virtual banks, today announced the launch of a pilot trial which is conducted within the Fintech Supervisory Sandbox (“FSS”) of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (“HKMA”). The pilot trial will offer virtual banking services to selected customers in Hong Kong, a precursor to Airstar’s full launch of its banking services to the general public. At the same time, Airstar’s official website has been launched which will provide the public with Airstar’s latest product and service information. During the pilot trial, Airstar will on-board around 2,000 customers from friends and families of the staff of…

ZA Bank announced today that they are now a fully operational virtual bank with the launch of their ZA Go savings product, which according to them, enables customers to “grow their wealth in this ultra-low interest environment”. They further stated that with no mininum balance users can enjoy an annual savings deposit rate of  1% for an amount up to HKD 500,000. This announcement follows their earlier soft launch in December 2019. Rockson Hsu, CEO of ZA Bank said: “As Hong Kong’s first virtual bank, ZA Bank is committed to its ‘Community-Driven’ approach to make banking accessible to everyone through…

Manulife is announcing its collaboration with dacadoo, a Swiss-based global digital health platform provider to enhance the company’s digital offerings in Asia. Under this new partnership, dacadoo will strengthen Manulife’s existing health engagement platform, ManulifeMOVE, to enable customers to more easily understand their health and be guided to develop healthier habits. Using behavioural science, online coaching functions and curated wellness content, the Manulife-dacadoo partnership will enrich ManulifeMOVE’s offering. The enhanced capabilities, which feature dacadoo’s patented Health Score, will provide customers a new scientific yet simple scoring method to measure how healthy they are and what they need to do to…

UnionPay International announces today that it has rolled out the mobile payment product of Huawei Pay in Pakistan in partnership with Huawei and the National Bank of Pakistan (NBP), one of the largest commercial banks in Pakistan. The new service allows local Huawei/Honor phone users to pay via both contactless and QR code payments and is the card scheme’s first mobile-wallet service to feature dual payment options overseas. The dual payments function of UnionPay’s mobile payment products adds QR code-based payment onto contactless payment, and can be applied to any NFC-enabled smartphone. With this function, users only need to link…

 TransferWise, today announced a partnership with Alipay, to provide its users with fast, affordable and convenient international money transfers to China. According to World Bank stats, China is projected to be one of the top remittance recipient countries in the world, with £54bn expected to be sent back home by Chinese expats and migrants living abroad. The partnership is a major expansion for TransferWise as it reaches a new, additional market of people managing their money via the Alipay platform. Alipay is owned and operated by Ant Financial Services Group. Kristo Käärmann, Co-founder and CEO of TransferWise, said: “Our newest…

Across Asia-Pacific (APAC), regulators are opening up their markets to new entrants that promise to transform the traditional banking model. By leveraging digital platforms and cutting-edge technologies, virtual banks aim to offer more affordable and convenient banking services, and reach the unbanked and traditional underserved markets. But as virtual banks are poised to transform the banking sector, their arrival is also introducing new risks related to cybersecurity and identity fraud, according to a new report by Jumio, an online payments and identity verification company. Cybersecurity risks and fraud on the rise In a report titled How eKYC is Streamlining Digital…

Shortly after Standard Chartered, PCCW, HKT and Trip.com unveiled its virtual bank MOX yesterday, UK-based Paymentology has come out to say that it is the cloud payment processor behind the new virtual bank Expanding into Asia and already working with a key player in the market, Standard Chartered Bank, Paymentology is looking to open their new Singapore office in April 2020 to serve this market and accelerate the digital transformation for banks entrenched with legacy systems. Matt Bruton, Chief Commercial Officer at Paymentoloy says: ‘As banks around the world look to replace their aging legacy card systems, we are providing…

Incumbent banks are at risk of losing billions of dollars in retail revenues in the next three to five years, as new competitors draw customers with no-fee banking services and regulators in select markets mandate simple banking fee structures to protect consumers, according to a new report from Accenture Retail banks in Hong Kong are among the most impacted in the study, with up to 7% of their revenue in the next three to five years at risk (behind only Australia, with up to 9%, and the UK, up to 8% of retail banking revenue). Still, banks in the city…

Alipay, a leading mobile payment platform operated by Ant Financial Services Group, today announced a three-year plan to further open up its platform to support the digital transformation of 40 million service providers across China. The plan marks a major milestone as Alipay continues to strengthen its positioning in China, evolving from a platform that provides inclusive financial services to an open, vibrant digital ecosystem that offers users a gateway into a comprehensive digital lifestyle, right in the palms of their hands. “The service sector in China is still in the nascent stages of digital transformation, and that means it…

Mox Bank Limited (“Mox”) unveiled today its brand name, brand identity and website. Mox is the new virtual bank in Hong Kong by Standard Chartered in partnership with PCCW, HKT and Trip.com. Mox is among the eight entities that were granted a virtual banking license last year by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority. Among the 8 licensees ZA was the first to soft-launch its services in December 2019. Deniz Güven, CEO of Mox, said “Mox operates in a whole new way by listening to customers and focusing on heart share. We aim to empower Hong Kong customers to grow and…

Klarna a Sweden-based fintech that provides pay later solutions announced that Ant Financial has taken a minority stake in it. This investment in Klarna by Ant Financial, the payment affiliate of Alibaba Group, supports the further development of their strategic cooperation, bringing more of Klarna’s innovative solutions to consumers and merchants within the broader Alibaba ecosystem. It will deepen ongoing collaborations between Klarna and Alipay, which currently enables shoppers at AliExpress, the global retail online marketplace of Alibaba Group, to use Klarna’s popular ‘Pay later’ solution across multiple markets. Sebastian Siemiątkowski, CEO at Klarna, says: “For too long consumers have…

UnionPay announced that it has become the first international payment brand to be included in Japan’s universal payment QR standard known as JPQR. In 2018, the Japanese government put forward a plan to build a cash-free society. To make it easier for merchants to accept mobile payments, the committee within the Japanese government set up to promote a cashless society within the country settled upon a JPQR standard that is compatible with 11 QR codes, including the code developed by UnionPay, allowing local merchants to accept multiple mobile payment options via a single JPQR code. The recent launch of the…

Ping An’s OneConnect has been selected as a strategic partner by Singapore based digital banking consortium BEYOND to jointly develop digital banking products and services for Singapore’s SME sector and their workforce. OneConnect is among the 8 entities who was granted a license to operate a virtual bank in Hong Kong and BEYOND is among the 21 applicants pursuing Singapore’s digital banking license. The BEYOND consortium is led by V3 Group through its fintech arm V3 Fintech and Singapore’s contactless payment pioneer EZ-Link, and comprises leaders in the Singapore business community including Singapore Business Federation, Far East Organization, Mitsui Sumitomo…

Fintech companies in China attracted USD 962.2 million in investments from venture capital, private equity and M&A in 2H 2019, resulting in a total of USD 4,479 million in investments for the whole of 2019, according to KPMG’s Pulse of Fintech H2’19 bi-annual report on global fintech investment trends. Fintech investment in China took a breather after a massive 2018, but the country’s fintech market continued to see substantial activity and Chinese companies still ranked among the largest fintech deals in Asia Pacific for the whole of 2019. China’s large technology giants continued to focus on growing their reach geographically,…

In 2019, a record of 24 fintech unicorns were born, with more than half of them (13) being from the US, according to data from CB Insights. Following the US is Germany with three new fintech unicorns, and the UK and Brazil both with two. Other countries and locations represented include Hong Kong, France, Japan and Australia. These new additions brought the total number of fintech unicorns around the world to 64, as of December 2019. Q1’19 saw three new unicorn births: N26 (Germany), a mobile-first, challenger bank operating in more than 20 markets Chime (US), a digital, challenger…

CoolBitX, has successfully secured $16.75 million in a Series B funding round. According to their statement, the funding will help provide FATF-compliant solutions to virtual asset service providers (VASPs) around the world through their service, Sygna. The funding round, led by Japan’s financial group SBI Holdings, will help expand Sygna beyond the Asia-Pacifc (APAC) region. In addition to SBI Holdings, other investors include the National Development Fund of Taiwan, BitSonic and Monex. In a press conference held at the beginning of the week, Michael Ou, CEO of CoolBitX, said: “We are thrilled and encouraged by the support that we have…

Blockchain technology is based on peer-to-peer topology and it encompasses a series of immutable records of data that is managed by thousands of computers around the world, not owned by any single entity. The biggest advantage of blockchain technology is that each of these blocks of data is secured and bound using cryptographic principles and it’s a completely decentralized system. Governments across the world explore the possibilities and applications of this technology. China is also no exception. In fact, 25 percent of new blockchain projects worldwide belong to China and there are also organizations that promote legitimate blockchain development like…

FinFabrik signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Chekk to integrate Chekk’s KYC capabilities to its market infrastructure “CrossPool”, enabling financial institutions in private markets to grow new digital asset businesses powered by distributed technology. CrossPool is built to serve the asset issuers and investors primarily to achieve two things:  creating a primary market where institutions originate and allocate digital assets, and a secondary market where investors are able to discover a price, buy and sell those assets whilst being able to transfer their ownership rights in a legal and compliant manner. Alex Medana, Co-founder & CEO, said, “Chekk and…