Last week, Facebook unveiled plans for a new cryptocurrency called Libra. Set to launch as early as 2020, Libra will be a stablecoin fully backed by a reserve of real assets. The goal, it says, is to avoid high fluctuations of value so the crypto can be used for everyday transactions across Facebook and be useful for commerce. The project is the result of a year-long effort and aims to spur growth on various of Facebook’s platforms, hopefully turning crypto payments across the company’s WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram platforms into a business that complements its advertising operation. Facebook hopes Libra…

Xero, the global small business platform announced a partnership with Stripe to develop new innovations that help small businesses get paid faster, in more ways, and gain more visibility over their business performance. The global partnership, announced at Xerocon San Diego 2019, will enable new payments experiences that are more seamless and efficient for small business owners and their advisors around the world. Xero and Stripe are building new tools to invoice customers more efficiently, bring additional insights on their business performance and get paid, no matter how or where they do business. The first two innovations announced today that…

Credit Suisse today announced a collaboration with Privé Technologies (Privé), a Hong Kong-based digital wealth management solutions platform provider for financial institutions, to provide External Asset Managers (EAMs) access to better wealth management technology solutions. The collaboration with Credit Suisse will enable Privé to further enhance their wealth management platform for EAMs including content generation, risk profiling and suitability, order management and execution capabilities. Privé was also recently recognised by Fintech News Hong Kong as on of the top wealthtechs operating out of East Asia. Commenting on the collaboration, Sascha Zehnter, Head of External Asset Managers, Private Banking Asia Pacific at Credit Suisse said,…

Diginex Group announced that a unit of its group Diginex AM has been granted a license a Type 4 (Advising on Securities) and Type 9 (Asset Management) license from the Securities & Futures Commission in Hong Kong. With their licensing secured, Diginex AM intends to provide an institutional on-ramp to the digital asset class through fund of digital asset hedge fund strategies. The market capitalisation of digital assets is projected to grow from US$250 billion to US$6.7 trillion in 2025, with institutional investors expected to constitute a significant portion of that growth. Similar to the evolution seen with traditional hedge…

South Korea’s banking industry is embracing digital transformation with 65.7% of the country’s financial institutions pursuing various business projects in regard to digitalization. These firms have committed a combined 584.5 billion won (US$492.7 million) this year towards such projects, according to the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS). A research conducted by the financial watchdog found that 38 of the digital projects currently being undertaken by South Korea’s financial services companies are dedicated to artificial intelligence (AI) services and adoption, 37 projects are dedicated to internal process automation, including robotic process automation, and 26 focuses on big data platform development and optimization.…

In his recently published e-book, George Harrap co-founder of Hong Kong based blockchain remittance startup Bitspark, pointed fingers at SWIFT for slowing innovation within the money transfer space. SWIFT reached out to Fintech News Hong Kong to respond to several assertions that Bitspark has made against the organisation. In the interest of providing a balanced view for our readers, we will be outlining SWIFT’s response to the assertions made in George Harrap’s new e-book. SWIFT Is Getting in the Way of Innovation In its statement SWIFT argues that instead of hampering innovation, they have been playing an active role in…

The government of Hangzhou unveiled a plan to build the eastern Chinese city into an international fintech hub by 2030. In the same plan Hangzhou aims to help produce at least 10 globally known fintech firms by 2022. The Chinese city is perhaps most well-known for being home to household fintech names like Ant Financial. The plan also highlights a focus into research and development within the following verticals; big data, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, blockchain and cybersecurity. In a previous announcement the government has already committed to investing $US 1.6 billion into a blockchain fund Hangzhou is far from…

Due to the worryingly slow development of digital banking in Hong Kong, regulator Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) granted virtual banking license it to a total of 8 virtual banks.  Since then, these companies have been locked in an intense battle for talent as they all ramp up for launch within 2019. The mass influx of virtual banks gearing up their launches is straining the small pool of local technical talent in Hong Kong’s budding financial ecosystem. We think these virtual banks should look outside of the island to exchange talent with other members of the Greater Bay Area, already an interconnected network of different…

Cyberport signed a memorandum of understanding Ping An’s fintech arm One connect to o be among the first batch partners of the company’s open Fintech SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) platform, “Gamma O”. The arrangement allows Cyberport’s 350 startups to enjoy priority to access to One Connects suite of solutions which, according to the press release, includes open APIs, big data and AI. OneConnect described the platform as a one stop “App Store” for the financial sector, providing turnkey fintech solutions. Dr. George Lam, Chairman of Cyberport, said, “Our partnership with Ping An, the leading tech-powered personal financial services group in China, not…

George Harrap, CEO and Co-founder of Hong-Kong based blockchain remittance startup, Bitspark, has outed SWIFT for hampering fintech from driving innovation in the money transfer sector in his new e-book He argues that the remittance sector is ripe for disruption. However, while many tech players are coming up with novel business models and digital solutions to bring prices down and improve efficiency, these players remain at an unfavorable position for not being part of the SWIFT network. “Processing a money transfer should not have to take 1-5 business days in this day and age. Many fintechs are working to change this…

Tencent and Shenzhen Stock Exchange (SZSE) have banded together to form a joint innovation lab, named the SZE – Tencent Financial Technology Joint Laboratory. The lab will focus in what they call “financial sci-tech”, and devote its existence to jointly promote innovation research, promotion and application of financial sci-tech projects. Sci-tech here simply refers to the union between science and technology, and financial sci-tech likely relates to fintech offerings. The two parties expressed specific intentions towards big data and cloud computing. The goal is to guide the development trend of fintech in the region, and to discover business application needs of…

Hong Kong is expected to see a boost in fintech activity after a relatively disappointing year in 2018 as the region saw a sharp dip in the total value of investments. According to Accenture, this was due to new measures put in place by Hong Kong regulators, resulting in a wait and see attitude that saw investors being more cautious than usual. The consulting firm also added that it expects to see fintech making a strong comeback this year. This contrasted to its seemingly much more successful mainland sibling, who instead saw a surge in funding last year and number…

Millions of cryptocurrency investors have been scammed out of massive sums of real money. In 2018, losses from cryptocurrency-related crimes amounted to US$1.7 billion. The criminals use both old-fashioned and new-technology tactics to swindle their marks in schemes based on digital currencies exchanged through online databases called blockchains. From researching blockchain, cryptocurrency and cybercrime, I can see that some cryptocurrency fraudsters rely on tried-and-true Ponzi schemes that use income from new participants to pay out returns to earlier investors. Others use highly automatized and sophisticated processes, including automated software that interacts with Telegram, an internet-based instant-messaging system popular among people…

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) and the Bank of Thailand (BOT) entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to foster collaboration between the two regulatory authorities in promoting financial innovation. Under the agreement, HKMA and BOT agreed to work together on referral of innovative businesses, information and experience sharing, and joint innovation projects. One potential collaboration under consideration is a joint research project on Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), to which the two authorities may apply the knowledge and experience they gained from their respective CBDC research studies, namely Project LionRock by HKMA and Project Inthanon by BOT. Project LionRock…

Insurtech investment continued its momentum with 85 deals totaling US$1.42 billion recorded in Q1 2019, marking the third-straight quarter to register more than US$1 billion in funding. Over Q4 2018, the deal count increased by 35%, although total funding decreased by 11%, according to the new Quarterly Insurtech Briefing from Willis Towers Watson, a global advisory, broking and solutions company. 54% of the deals of Q1 2019 were outside the US, marking a continuing trend, the firm says. Deal count in the UK increased by 50%, and in the US by 44%. However, deal count in China fell by 38%.…

UPDATE: Four of Hong Kong virtual banks have since launched, check out our latest article to find out the progress on Hong Kong’s virtual banking scene Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) has announced a grand total of eight virtual banking license recipients, in three separate announcements so far. Despite the rumoured 29 hopefuls vying for the license, it’s likely that HKMA will only be granting licenses to at most, 8 applicants, which quota has been fulfilled as of yesterday. With the intention of launching their Hong Kong offering within 6 to 9 months, those selected to pass the reportedly high…

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) issued virtual banking rights to 4 more companies: Ant SME Services (Hong Kong) , Infinium, Insight Fintech HK, and Ping An OneConnect. According to their business plans, these four newly licenced virtual banks intend to launch their services in around 6 to 9 months. Many of these new licensees come with strong backing, below is a quick look at the the companies behind the new licensees. 5 were predicted earlier to be among the companies who will be granted virtual banking licenses. Norman Chan Chief Executive of the HKMA, said: “We are…

OneDegree, a Hong Kong-based insurance technology start-up under Cyberport Incubation Programme, extends its Series A round to above US$30 million, subject to regulator’s approval. The extended round is led by BitRock Capital and it sees participation from Cyberport Macro Fund, Cathay Venture, and previous investors from its Series A. OneDegree intends to use the funds to accelerate efforts to scale its end-to-end digital insurance platform, launch new product offerings in Hong Kong, and explore growth opportunities including the “Greater Bay Area” initiative. It’s co-founder Alex Leung added that it is an opportune time for Hong Kong to secure their leadership…

WeChat Pay, one of China’s most popular e-wallet providers, has just updated its payment policy to ban cryptocurrency transactions. The move was first noticed by founding partner of crypto investment firm Primitive, Dovey Wan in a tweet. https://twitter.com/doveywan/status/1125667936335581190?s=21 According to the tweet, merchants that serve any token issuance or fund raising of crypto trading activities will risk account termination. Since most over-the-counter transactions locally occur on WeChat, Dovey expressed concern that the move would impact liquidity to some extent. The updated rules will come into force on the 31st of May, stopping merchants from using its platform to engage in…

In 2018 and early 2019, the Japanese fintech market witnessed significant developments. Japan’s Financial Services Agency (FSA) published a report in December 2018 which proposed new regulatory requirements for virtual currency exchange service providers and a new regulatory framework for initial coin offerings (ICOs). The FSA has also announced its intention to ease restrictions on the types of activities in which banks can engage and launched in June 2018 a new regulatory sandbox regime to allow fintechs and financial companies to test innovative products. As the Japanese fintech industry continues to grow, we look today at ten of the country’s…