Diginex, a Hong Kong-based digital assets financial services company, announced that it has started listing and trading on Nasdaq. The cryptocurrency exchange operator said that it had completed its business combination transaction with 8i Enterprises Acquisition Corp., a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC). The transaction is said to be the first listed company on Nasdaq with a cryptocurrency exchange. Diginex will trade on Nasdaq under the ticker symbol “EQOS” where it will offer investors the opportunity to participate in the growth of digital assets. Its warrants will trade under the ticker “EQOSW”. Approximately US$50 million was raised, comprising both Diginex’s…

Though robo-advisors are relatively new in China, they are rapidly rising in popularity, with now roughly 38% of adult Internet users using automated, algorithm-driven financial planning services, according to 2020 survey from Kagan, a research division within S&P Global Market Intelligence. Interest is also high amongst non-users, with 68% expressing some level of interest in using robo-advisors, the study found. The study, which surveyed 1,000 adult Internet users in China, found that users of robo-advisors tend to be younger, more educated and living in the city. 49% of robo-advisors users are aged below 39, 68% have a tertiary education, and…

Ant Group has unveiled Trusple, a blockchain based-platform powered by AntChain to help SMEs with cross-border trade. Trusple aims to make it easier and less costly for all participants, especially Small to Medium Enterprises (SMEs), to sell their products and services to customers around the world. It also reduces costs for financial institutions so that they can better serve SMEs in need. Based on the concept of “Trust Made Simple,” Trusple works by generating a smart contract once a buyer and a seller upload a trading order on the platform. As the order is executed, the smart contract is automatically…

Airwallex, a cross border payment company, announced that the company has closed its extended Series D fundraising with an additional US$40 million from new and existing investors. This builds on the Hong Kong-based fintech unicorn’s US$160 milion Series D round announced in April 2020, bringing its total Series D funding to US$200 million and total equity funding raised to date to over US$400 million. The additional funds raised will enable Airwallex to invest in the continual build of its product suite, to strengthen its existing footprint in key regions such as Asia Pacific and UK/Europe, and to expand its global…

Ant Bank, part of Ant Group, has officially launched to offer banking services to Hong Kong citizens. Ant Bank was one of the 8 recipients of the virtual banking license by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA), this launch makes it the 6th virtual bank to launch their services in Hong Kong. This launch is ahead of the group’s mega-IPO which they aim for it to be the biggest listing in history. Ant Bank is hardly the financial giant’s first attempt at a digital bank. It also co-owns MyBank, one of the first virtual lenders in Mainland China. Individuals can…

US-headquartered blockchain firm ConsenSys has been granted the lead for the second phase of Project Inthanon-LionRock, a cross-border payment network study project by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA). Previously, HKMA and the Bank of Thailand (BOT) had signed a Memorandum of Understanding in May 2019, initiating Project Inthanon-LionRock to study the application of a central bank digital currency (CBDC) for cross-border payments. The project was completed in December 2019 and a distributed ledger technology-based proof-of-concept (PoC) prototype was developed with 10 participating banks from both regions. Key findings of the report was published on HKMA and BOT websites. Now, ConsenSys…

Ant Group, yesterday officially launched its much-talked about inaugural INCLUSION Fintech Conference both to a live audience and virtually. The first day of the conference began with a morning plenary session, followed by 17 forums in the afternoon and a nature-themed music festival along Shanghai’s iconic Huangpu River in the evening. The conference welcomed prominent speakers from all corners of the world, including representatives from the United Nations and the International Monetary Fund, as well as Nobel Prize-winning scholars, to participate in a wide-ranging conversation on how digital technology can help build a more inclusive, green, and sustainable world. An…

At the 2020 Huawei Developer Conference held earlier this week, fintech influencer, best-selling author, and entrepreneur Brett King joined the finance tech.session to talk about the role of technology to improve financial inclusion and shared his views on how banking will look like in the years to come. In light of this, AppGallery has been growing rapidly as it pushes to onboard more financial partners and attract banking apps from different regions. In particular, the app marketplace is seeing strong demand coming from users looking for apps that allow users to manage their finances with their local banks and financial…

Mox has officially launched to the general public in Hong Kong. Mox is the virtual bank created by Standard Chartered in partnership with PCCW, HKT and Trip.com, which provides its suite of fully digital retail banking services over its app. The virtual bank had a brand launch back in March this year followed by an external pilot where a handful of select customers were invited to use its banking services to help them refine their offerings before the official launch. Deniz Güven, CEO of Mox, said: “We are so excited to welcome everyone in Hong Kong to Mox. We designed…

From September 10 to 12, 2020, Huawei Consumer Business Group (BG) held the annual Huawei Developer Conference. Themed HDC.Together, the event saw multiple announcements being made, including the launch of new products, as well as updates on the Huawei Mobile Services (HMS) ecosystem. Huawei’s developer community and app ecosystem The HMS ecosystem has grown to now counting some 1.8 million developers worldwide, doubling that of last year’s Huawei Developer Conference. This figure makes the HMS ecosystem the third largest mobile ecosystem in the world, Zhang Ping’an, president of consumer cloud service at the Huawei Consumer Business Group, said during his…

Neat, a Hong Kong-based financial technology startup, announced its partnership with Snowflake, a cloud data platform. Under the new partnership, Neat will utilise Snowflake’s cloud data platform to integrate their data into a single source for data harmonisation, enabling business teams to leverage data insights. Neat is best known as a payment solutions provider, serves SMEs in Asia and Europe by offering access to financial tools such as foreign exchange, online account opening, and corporate cards for fast and efficient international and multi-currency transactions. To enhance customer experience, and as a digital only company, Neat adopted Snowflake’s cloud data platform to…

A recent report published by consulting firm EPAM Continuum outlined behaviors, expectations and motivations, with key findings suggesting that, despite recent innovations in financial services, the fundamental behavioral drivers of customers remain largely unchanged. The report surveyed 4,500 people across key banking regions including the United Kingdom, the United States, Hong Kong and Singapore. The report said that for any radical change to happen, banks need to become more ubiquitous and have the ability to seamlessly integrate with the platforms and services that make up their customers’ personal digital ecosystem in order to bring banking to them – not the…

The Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Research Institute (ASTRI) has partnered with the University of Hong Kong (HKU) to jointly nurture fintech talent in the region. The agreement will see both parties develop the Technology Oriented Practitioner (TOP) programme, a work-study scheme for first-year students enrolled on the MSc programme in FinTech and Data Analytics at HKU. Following that, ASTRI will be providing paid full-time employment for up to 30 students for a nine-month period and assigning them to one of their many ongoing fintech projects. Hugh Chow, Chief Executive Officer of ASTRI, said: “We are fully committed to…

Hong Kong based ZA Bank announced that it has selected Accuity, provider of financial crime screening, payments and counterparty know your customer (KYC) solutions. The virtual bank has implemented Accuity’s screening solution to improve customer experiences, and at the same time, meet domestic and international regulatory requirements. Accuity’s Firco solution operationalises three key steps: automated alert detection, reduction of false positive alerts, and prioritisation of high-risk alerts. This allows ZA Bank to generate an electronic audit trail that acts as retrospective proof of the bank’s compliance policies in action, for sharing with auditors and regulators. Under Hong Kong’s regulatory and…

Livi bank has selected Wolters Kluwer, American Dutch information services company, for its Regulatory Reporting solution to manage the bank’s regulatory reporting obligations. livi had recently launched its virtual banking app to Hong Kong customers. The bank is backed by Bank of China Hong Kong (Holdings), Jingdong Digits Technology and the Jardine Matheson Group. The solution combines bank data into a single source of data to ensure consistency, reconciliation and accuracy, and includes Wolters Kluwer’s Regulatory Update Service. “We are delighted to be working with livi bank as it commences its operations to provide its innovative banking offering. We look…

Hong Kong’s insurance industry worth US$66 billion (HK$552 billion) in the past years has provided a fertile ground for the digitalisation push by innovative insurtech startups in the region.  The current pandemic has created a positive shift to accelerate digital adoption by consumers which can be leveraged by startups looking to enhance customer-centricity in their products and services.  This development has been spurred on by digital tech park Cyberport which houses over 30 insurtech companies seeking to accelerate the industry’s digital transformation.  Among them are Cyberport incubatees PortfoPlus and 10Life, who are on a mission to remove the complexities from…

From September 10 to 12, 2020, Huawei will be hosting its annual developer conference, a multi-day event expected to bring together more than 400 industry veterans and over 500 tech firms to discuss the latest trends and technologies set to transform software and app development. For this year, the Huawei Developer Conference 2020 (Together) will delve into some of the emerging technologies and how companies and developers must prepare for the new era of intelligence and interconnectivity. It will also include an exciting line-up of announcements, with Huawei set to share the latest on HMS Core 5.0, HarmonyOS, and EMUI…

Recent research by gini, shows 66.7% of respondents feel their bank should be doing more to improve online services during the pandemic, with one of the major pain points being the lack of clarity in the way information is displayed on transaction histories. gini describes itself as a data enrichment fintech. The survey showed that 81.7% of respondents have seen transactions they don’t recognise on their statements, and the majority used the words, “worried”, “annoyed” and “frustrated” to describe how this problem makes them feel. While the problem of unrecognised transactions is not a new one, the compounded effect of…

Alibaba’s Ant Group announced that its inaugural INCLUSION Fintech Conference originally scheduled for April 2020, will now take place in September 24-26, 2020, in Shanghai. Organised by Ant Group and Alipay, the conference will feature a combination of online and onsite events to enable a global discussion among the financial and technology communities on how digital technology can help build a more inclusive, green, and sustainable world, especially as economies and businesses continue to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. The INCLUSION Fintech Conference will present over 40 online and offline sessions, with 13,000 square meters in onsite exhibition space. To…

EMQ, a financial settlement network, announced that it has further expanded its real-time international payment capabilities across Vietnam, leveraging National Payments Corporation of Vietnam (NAPAS) – the country’s domestic payment network. This announcement follows their recent fundraising round of US$ 20 million Series B led by WI Harper Group. EMQ was also accepted into Taiwan’s Regulatory Sandbox by the Financial Supervisory Commission in Taiwan. “Southeast Asia is growing at an unprecedented pace with Vietnam as the fastest growing economy, and it is fuelling the demands for a network infrastructure like EMQ that facilitates in minutes cross-border payments across the region,”…