Author: Vincent Fong

In their quarterly results announcement, Tencent revealed that its fintech and cloud services generated RMB21.8 billion (US$ 3.1 Billion) in the first quarter of 2019, a 44% year-on-year growth. This quarter marks the first time the Chinese internet giant is disclosing the performance of it’s cloud and fintech business separately. The group attributed the growth this division to the rapidly emerging demand for digital payments and the synergy of their fintech services with the social element of WeChat. Commenting on the quarterly results Mr. Ma Huateng, Chairman and CEO of Tencent said, “Our payment, other Fintech services and cloud business,…

Earlier this week, South Morning China Post reported that Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission has issued its first equity crowdfunding license to AngelHub. As someone who is actively keeping track of the scene, I received this news with much enthusiasm. Equity crowdfunding is both an excellent alternative for startups seeking capitals and retails investors seeking to access high potential early stage startups. But there’s a caveat. It resembles equity crowdfunding, but only to an extent. At the risk of sounding pedantic, SFC didn’t exactly issue an equity crowdfunding license to Angel Hub, instead the platform is granted two licenses…

Since its announcement in early 2018, HKMA’s virtual banking license has attracted strong interest from the industry to seek regulatory approval to operate a virtual bank. It is reported that within a short time frame the regulator saw over 29 applications. Almost a year since the licensing regime has been issued, it is rumoured that we will be seeing our first batch of approved virtual banks in the next few weeks. According to the Financial Times (paywall) who are citing anonymous sources, the companies are namely — Ant Financial, Tencent, Standard Chartered, Xiaomi, Hong Kong Telecom, Zhong An with Citic…