The Best of Finovate Global 2023: Digital Transformation, Financial Inclusion, AI and Automation

The Best of Finovate Global 2023: Digital Transformation, Financial Inclusion, AI and Automation

Our final Finovate Global column of 2023 celebrates the conversations we’ve had this year with fintech innovators from around the world.

Stay tuned in 2024 for more interviews with some of the most interesting founders, entrepreneurs, and thought leaders in fintech and financial services.


“We developed BehaviorQuant because every financial decision is ultimately made by a person or a team. BehaviorQuant solves a core problem that underlies the entire investment industry: we don’t have systematic knowledge about the people and teams behind investment decisions. And that’s true for financial professionals and clients alike.” Dr. Thomas Oberlechner, founder and CEO of BehaviorQuant. Interview.


“Moniepoint solves the problem of fragmented, inaccessible, and low-quality financial services for businesses in emerging markets.  It is a full-service business banking platform seeking to provide all the digital financial services a typical business needs.” Tosin Eniolorunda, founder and CEO of Moniepoint. Interview.


“Eight hundred million voice conversations are recorded daily in Europe and many more worldwide. A tiny 1% of these conversations are checked for quality control, employee training, and business results improvement. Ender Turing is a conversations intelligence and automation platform to close 99% of the conversation gap for business growth.” Olena Iosifova, CEO of Ender Turing. Interview.


“Capital raising is broken. Private companies spend months and even years in the fundraising process, learning how to raise capital and repeating the same mistakes, approaching the wrong investors and often spamming them with irrelevant investment opportunities.” Ulyana Shtybel, CEO of Quoroom. Interview.


“At Refine intelligence, our mission is to help banks regain that superpower of really knowing their customers’ life stories, so their financial crime teams can quickly clear AML or scam alerts triggered by legitimate customer activity. We work with Risk, Financial Crime, BSA and AML teams. Fraud teams look at our technology to help with scam operations.” Uri Rivner, co-founder and CEO of Refine Intelligence. Interview.


“It was an honor to be ranked by CB Insights in its Fintech 250 list and, as one of only seven African start-ups featured, it speaks to the pioneering approach we are introducing to the world – revolutionizing payments and creating a financial services ecosystem for Africa.”

“As sub-Saharan Africa gains recognition on the global stage, we are seeing innovative and pioneering products emerge and rise in popularity amongst consumers, diversifying the products they can choose from.” Tayo Oviosu, founder and CEO of Paga. Interview.


Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Asia-Pacific

Sub-Saharan Africa

Central and Eastern Europe

  • Berlin, Germany-based cloud banking platform Mambu to power the new Neobank Engine launched by Trigger Software.
  • Mintos, a multi-asset platform based in Latvia, announced addition of personalized ETFs to its product suite.
  • Hungary’s OTP Bank partnered with Intellect Global Consumer banking (iGCB), the consumer banking arm of Indian banking technology copany Intelltect Design Arena.

Middle East and Northern Africa

Central and Southern Asia

Latin America and the Caribbean


Photo by Markus Spiske

Finovate Global Australia: Payments Partnerships, Verification Pilots, and Debating the Fate of BNPL

Finovate Global Australia: Payments Partnerships, Verification Pilots, and Debating the Fate of BNPL

A newly announced partnership between institutional payment orchestration platform Paydock and Australia’s Commonwealth Bank (CBA) will give merchants in Australia the ability to offer their customers a range of new payment options. This new flexibility comes courtesy of PowerBoard, which provides a dynamic payments experience to customers via API, without requiring businesses to make major changes to their existing payments infrastructure.

“Our partnership with CommBank sets a global precedent for financial institutions,” Paydock CEO and founder Rob Lincolne said. “It shows not only how banks can bring flexible payment strategies to customers in record time with payments orchestration, but also it establishes a new paradigm whereby banks can become more competitive and deliver more value by working with fintech players.”

PowerBoard will make it easier for CBA to deploy the latest payment methods, types, providers, and processors to merchants. CBA General Manager of Merchant Solutions Karen Last noted growing customer interest in new payment options. In a statement, she highlighted alternatives such as account-to-account payments, digital wallets, and Buy Now Pay Later as reasons to pursue the partnership with Paydock.

“PowerBoard makes it significantly easier for Australian merchants to offer choice to customers and manage their payments ecosystems, without all the costly integrations,” Last said.

Headquartered in London, Paydock also maintains an office in Sydney, Australia. The company has raised $31.8 million (£25 million) in funding according to Crunchbase. This capital came in the form of a Series A investment in May that was led by IAG Silverstripe.

Commonwealth Bank of Australia is one of the top 50 banks in the world. Founded in 1911, CBA became a fully private bank in 1996. The institution is part of the “big four” of Australian banks, along with the National Australia Bank (NAB), ANZ, and Westpac. CBA had total assets of 1.2 trillion AUD as of 2022.


Speaking of Commonwealth Bank, the institution also announced this week that Bendigo Bank and fraud monitoring firm Satori will pilot CBA’s NameCheck technology. Launched this spring, NameCheck is built to prevent scams and mistaken payments. According to the bank, the solution has prevented more than 10,000 scam payments and reduced mistaken payments by more than $100 million, to date.

“With scams and fraud costing Australians and businesses billions of dollars annually, it’s clear a whole of ecosystem response is needed to combat this problem,” CBA Group Executive Business Banking Mike Vacy-Lyle said. “We are proud to be able to extend our industry-leading technology to others and contribute to protecting more Australians against cyber criminals.”

NameCheck leverages advanced technology and CBA’s access to payment data to help establish the accuracy of account credentials. Bendigo Bank will integrate NameCheck into its Up app. Financial fraud monitoring company Satori will also take advantage of the technology.

“We are excited to work with CBA and extend the NameCheck service to our corporate customer base to complement the existing AI driven financial controls monitoring service driving operational efficiency and preventing fraud,” Satori Executive Director of Growth Mark Bookatz said.

Founded in 2002, Satori is headquartered in Sydney, Australia. The company has more than 200+ customers in the APAC region who rely on its automated transaction monitoring services. These firms include Afterpay, Qantas, and Volkswagen Group.


The Australian government’s plans to regulate Buy Now Pay Later services are having a hard time keeping up with public enthusiasm for the payment option.

This week, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) shared results of a survey that indicated a significant increase in use of Buy Now, Pay Later services. The specific demographic was individuals between the ages of 18 and 39. The survey showed that more than 40% of those in this cohort had used BNPL services in the past year. The survey, which had almost 1,000 participants, also noted an overall increase in the number of people using BNPL. Incorporating data from a Reserve Bank of Australia research paper from 2022, the RBA determined that there has been an increase of 8% in adult BNPL use since 2019.

Designing a regulatory framework for Buy Now Pay Later services in Australia has been on the government’s to-do list since the spring. The goal is to bring BNPL under the umbrella of existing credit regulations, including credit license requirements, and minimum standards on conduct, services, and products. This also includes mandating that BNPL companies conduct credit history checks. Overall the regulations, which will treat BNPL services as conventional lending products, are seen as among the toughest proposed.

But the rollout has hit a snag. The RBA has announced that the new regulatory framework for BNPL will arrive next year rather than at the end of 2023 as originally planned. The reason for the delay was “resourcing pressures” on the government’s legislation writing team. And while this will likely give New Zealand regional bragging rights over its larger neighbor when it comes to adoption of BNPL regulations, the impact of the delay on the Australian BNPL market should be slight.


Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Latin America and the Caribbean

  • Latin America-based fintech Clara launched its new payment account in Brazil this week.
  • ACI Worldwide partnered with Mexican fintech Mexipay.
  • Payroll automation specialist Somapay teamed up with software accounting firm Fortes Tecnologia to launch FortesPay in Brazil.

Asia-Pacific

  • Taiwanese software company TPIsoftware teamed up with digital lending platform provider HESFinTech.
  • Airo, a branch of CP Global Fintech Solutions went live as Malaysia’s first actively managed digital investment platform.
  • JuanHand, an online lending platform based in the Philippines, inked a loan channelling partnership with SeaBank.

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • Microlender Ezra teamed up with Kacha Digital Financial Services S.C. and Global Bank of Ethiopia to launch a digital lending service in the country.
  • South African fintech Stitch launched its Pay with Crypto feature.
  • Electronic Payments International looked at the role of bank/fintech partnerships in Africa’s financial services industry.

Central and Eastern Europe

Middle East and Northern Africa

Central and Southern Asia


Photo by David Jia

Finovate Global China: Fintech’s Future, Cross-Border E-Commerce, and Digital Wallets

Finovate Global China: Fintech’s Future, Cross-Border E-Commerce, and Digital Wallets

U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping are meeting in California this week. With that in mind, Finovate Global turns to China for the latest fintech news from the world’s second most populous country.


For context, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) released its Fintech Development Plan for 2022-2025 almost two years ago. In its analysis of the PBOC’s Plan, China Briefing noted that the country had “much to gain” from innovation in fintech and financial services. In large part this was because of China’s “insufficient supply of inclusive finance, especially in rural areas.” The country reached a consumer fintech adoption rate of 87% in 2019. And, again, further fintech adoption in rural areas could cause this rate to quickly climb even higher.

What obstacles confront China’s fintech sector? China Briefing suggests that “unbalanced application of intelligent technology” is among the issues to be resolved – or at least better managed. The report references the so-called “Matthew Effect” in which stronger positions become stronger and weaker positions become weaker to describe the one of China’s bigger challenges when it comes to innovation in financial services.

Read the report from China Briefing to learn more about how China plans to “leapfrog improvement of the fintech sector”.


China’s JD.com launched its enhanced authentication solution for imported goods in the region, JD Smart Check. The new process is part of the company’s cross-border e-commerce platform, JD Worldwide.

JD Smart Check has three main focuses: improving quality inspections for cosmetic products, leveraging blockchain technology to enhance anti-counterfeiting activity, and providing on-demand authenticity inspections for products shipped by direct mail. New X-ray fluorescence analysis to provides fast, on-site assessment of cosmetics and personal care products at JD’s logistic centers. With regards to anti-counterfeiting efforts, the company leverages serialized tracking codes, supply chain monitoring, and product inspection videos to ensure accurate scrutiny of inventories. Lastly, JD Worldwide will be able to better serve direct mail shoppers by adding reports from authoritative centers to its product inspection services.

China’s largest retailer by revenue, JD.com serves nearly 600 million customers. The company operates the largest fulfillment infrastructure for any Chinese e-commerce firm.


Ant Group has forged a partnership with Payments Network Malaysia (PayNet). The partnership will enable travelers from eight nations – representing eight different supported digital wallets – to use PayNet’s DuitNow QR in Malaysia.

The DuitNow QR network consists of more than 1.8 million merchant touchpoints throughout Malaysia. The eight supported wallets are Alipay (China), AlipayHK (Hong Kong SAR), HelloMoney by AUB (Philippines), Hipay (Mongolia), MPay (Macau SAR), Naver Pay (Japan), Toss Pay (South Korea) and True Money (Thailand). Group CEO of PayNet Farhan Ahmad said that the cross-border digital payments collaboration with Ant Group signified “a new Silk Road emerging” that will be “powered by cross-border payment functionality.”

The Ant Group/PayNet partnership comes as a recent report commissioned by Alipay indicates that increases in average consumer spending over the past few years will help accelerate intra-Asia cross-border travel and payments. The companies noted that the partnership extends “beyond connectivity” to include joint marketing efforts that will boost merchant and brand visibility in digital wallets.


Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Central and Southern Asia

Latin America and the Caribbean

Asia-Pacific

Sub-Saharan Africa

Central and Eastern Europe

Middle East and Northern Africa


Photo by Lian Rodriguez

Finovate Global MENA: Tabby Raises $200 Million, Finastra Powers Innovation in Qatar, Kuwait Promotes Financial Wellness for Teens

Finovate Global MENA: Tabby Raises $200 Million, Finastra Powers Innovation in Qatar, Kuwait Promotes Financial Wellness for Teens

Tabby, a Buy Now, Pay Later platform based in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, has secured $200 million in Series D funding. The round was led by Wellington Management. The investment gives the company a valuation of $1.5 billion, making Tabby MENA’s latest fintech unicorn. With participation from Bluepool Capital and existing investors STV, Mubadala Investment Capital, Arbor Ventures, and PayPal Ventures, the investment comes ahead of Tabby’s planned IPO in Saudi Arabia.

“Tabby set out with a purpose to reshape financial services – one that’s fair and responsible – and with this investment we can advance our mission across Saudi Arabia and the UAE,” Tabby CEO and co-founder Hosam Arab said. “We’re very happy to have Wellington Management lead this round given their deep expertise in financial services.”

Buy Now, Pay Later services are an interesting development especially in markets where access to credit and financing products is limited. Tabby reports 10 million users and more than 30,000 brands on its platform. These brands include to of the largest retail groups in the MENA region. Managing more than $6 billion in annualized transaction volume, Tabby notes growth in its presence in physical stores, now representing more than 20% of the company’s total volume.


Meanwhile, some 600 kilometers to the east, Qatar-based CQUR Bank has forged a partnership with digital banking solutions provider Finastra. CQUR Bank will implement a pair of Finastra’s solutions – Trade Innovation and Corporate Channels – to power its new online banking portal.

Trade Innovation is an end-to-end solution for frictionless trade and supply chain financing. Corporate Channels is a digital banking platform that gives CQUR Bank a single portal to unify a variety of services for corporate clients. These services include trade, cash, supply chain finance, lending, and treasury operations.

“Corporate customers are increasingly demanding faster, digital, and connected services from their bank that truly elevate how they manage their finances and pursue new avenues for growth,” Finastra Managing Director, MENAT Lending, Kamal El Khoury explained. “By delivering new services and improving the end-to-end customer experience, the bank can future-proof its business while continuing to enhance economic growth through trade and sustainable development.”

Formed out of a merger between Misys and D+H in 2017, Finastra is headquartered in the U.K. The company has more than 8,000 financial institutions, including 45 of the world’s top 50 banks, using its software solutions and services. Simon Paris is CEO.


This week, Kuwait Finance House (KFH) launched the first shari’a-compliant digital bank in the country. Named Tam Digital Bank, the new institution was hailed as a major milestone in KFY’s digital banking transformation efforts.

“With its modern, youthful design, user-friendly and efficient usage, along with innovative banking services backed with advanced technology, we are confident that Tam will fulfull customers’ desires and exceed their expectations,” KFH Acting Group CEO Abdulwahab lesa Al Rushood said. “At KFH, we take account of factors such as convenience, speed, quality, safety, and innovation in line with our motto ‘Easy Banking Experience’.”

In order to open a Tam account, customers must be at least 15 years old. They must also have a civil ID, and a smartphone to download the Tam app. There are no documents to present and no bank branch to visit in order to get started.

KFH Kuwait CEO Khaled Yousef AlShamlan underscored the importance of appealing to younger customers. “Through Tam, youth will receive many benefits, including opening an account, transferring student allowance(s), tracking expenses, transferring funds, in addition to rewards program, points, offers, and exceptional discounts that meet all their needs, as well as 24/7 customer service,” AlShamlan said.

A pioneer in Islamic Finance and Shari’a Compliant Banking, Kuwait Finance House was founded in 1977 as the country’s first Islamic bank. KFH sits at the center of the KFH Group banking network. This network includes 430 branches, more than 790 ATMs, and 8,600 employees. KFH’s Shari’a compliant products and services cover real estate, trade finance, and investments, as well as commercial, retail, and corporate banking. In addition to Kuwait, KFH operates in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Turkey, Malaysia, and Australia.


Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Middle East and Northern Africa

Central and Southern Asia

Latin America and the Caribbean

Asia-Pacific

Sub-Saharan Africa

Central and Eastern Europe


Photo by Abdullah Ghatasheh

Finovate Global Singapore: Multi-Currency Wallets, MAS on Scams, and the OCBC OKs AI

Finovate Global Singapore: Multi-Currency Wallets, MAS on Scams, and the OCBC OKs AI

Arguably the premier fintech hub in Asia, Singapore has benefitted from its own strong growth, the emerging economies of its neighbors, and a robust regulatory regime in the form of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS).

According to the 2022 FinTech State of Play report from the Singapore Fintech Association, Singapore has more than 1,000 fintech firms in its jurisdiction. The majority of fintechs in Singapore are involved in payments, financial services infrastructure, regtech, lending, and money management. Payments is considered the most mature sector within the industry. At the same time, observers have highlighted regtech as an area of potential opportunity for growth.

This week in Finovate Global we take a look at handful of recent developments in Singapore’s fintech industry. These items include a new investment, positive signs for AI adoption in financial services, and new regulatory guidance from the MAS.


Singapore-based multi-currency mobile wallet company YouTrip has secured $50 million in funding. The Series B round was led by venture capital firm Lightspeed. The investment takes YouTrip’s total capital raised to more than $105 million. The company plans to use the funding to launch new products and features, invest in technology, and expand into new markets. YouTrip also expects to offer GooglePay later this year.

“YouTrip launched in 2018 with the bold vision to empower everyone with a smarter and more convenient way to pay in foreign currency,” YouTrip CEO Caecilia Chu said. “The latest funding round is a testament to our strong potential in the B2C and B2B payment spaces.”

YouTrip is a mobile financial platform that offers a multi-currency mobile wallet and a contactless Mastercard. Users can make fee-free payments in more than 150 currencies. YouTrip also features 10 selected currencies that are available for in-app exchange. This enables users to lock in favorable exchange rates when they become available.

In a blog post at the company’s website, YouTrip thanked its customers for not abandoning the company during the pandemic. “You stuck with us through thick and thin – supporting us when we expanded to e-commerce to help you continue saving on FX transactions as you stayed safe indoors,” the company noted.

YouTrip achieved profitability in April. The company processes $10 billion in payments annually. These payments come largely from the consumer side of YouTrip’s business. This includes facilitating payments for users traveling overseas, transactions on international websites, and corporate spending by SMEs that use YouTrip’s YouBiz service.


How eagerly are financial services companies embracing AI? OCBC Bank Singapore announced this week that it is making a new AI-powered chatbot available to its 30,000-member staff across 19 countries. The bot, OCBC ChatGPT, was developed in partnership with Microsoft Azure, and operates similarly to Open AI’s ChatGPT.

The solution will be used to help bank employees with writing, research, and ideation, and comes to OCBC Bank after a six-trial. Approximately 1,000 OCBC employees participated in the trial, and reported completing their tasks twice as fast with the bot – including fact-checking – compared to without.

OCBC Bank is currently working with four specific generative AI functions. These roles are: Wingman, which helps coders write code; Whisper, which transcribes and summarizes voice calls; Buddy, which retrieves data from company documents and records staff meetings; and Document AI, which provides summaries of documents like financial reports.

“We are excited to be one of the first banks in the world to deploy generative AI tools at scale,” OCBC Head of Group Data Donald MacDonald said. “We believe that these tools have the potential to transform the way our employees work by automating a wide range of time-consuming tasks, freeing up their time to focus on more strategic and value-added work.”


Looking for someone to blame when it comes to phishing scams? The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) have weighed in with a new paper proposing a Shared Responsibility Framework (SRF) for phishing scams. The framework points to specific actions both financial institutions and telecommunications companies need to take in order to mitigate the damage from phishing scams. The SRF also requires these entities to pay affected scam victims when these actions are not carried out.

“This incentivizes vigilance by all parties in the ecosystem to uphold safety in e-payments,” MAS Deputy Managing Director Ho Hern Shin said. Additionally, the two entities proposed heightened standards in the E-payments User Protection Guidelines (EUPG) to strengthen anti-scam efforts. IMDA Deputy Chief Executive Aileen Chia praised the involvement of telecommunications companies in the effort to fight phishing. “The inclusion of Telcos in the Shared Responsibility Framework as supporting infrastructure providers serves to strengthen the ecosystem against scams,” Chia explained.


Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Central and Eastern Europe

Middle East and Northern Africa

  • Saudi Arabia-based fintech Hala introduced new Chief Technology Officer Saleem Arshad.
  • UAE-based digital payments provider Hubpay launched its cross-border “Collect & Remit” solution.
  • Egyptian bank Banque Misr partnered with telecommunications company Etisalat Misr to launch e-payment technology company, SuperPay.

Central and Southern Asia

  • India’s first digital escrow platform Escrowpay raised $6 million in funding.
  • Mint reported that India ranked third among countries with the most fintech unicorns.
  • The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced an investigation of Kazakhstan fintech Freedom Holding over compliance issues.

Latin America and the Caribbean

  • Uruguay-based cross-border payments processor dLocal forged a partnership with ACE Money Transfer.
  • Open Finance platform Belvo teamed up with Colombia’s MOVii to help fight digital payments fraud.
  • Plata, a Mexico-based fintech platform, turned to South Africa’s Entersekt to boost security for its Plata credit card.

Asia-Pacific

  • Triple-A, a Singapore-based digital currency payment institution, raised $10 million in Series A funding.
  • GoTo Financial partnered with Indonesia’s Bank Jago to launch new bank account for everyday transactions, GoPay Tabungan by Jago.
  • International B2B payment infrastructure platform Thunes has teamed up with China Construction Bank to enhance cross-border payments.

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • Disrupt Africa profiled Ghana-based payments infrastructure startup PAL.
  • Cameroon-based fintech Koree won the 2023 Ecobank Fintech Challenge
  • Rest of World featured Nigerian money transfer app OPay.

Photo by Stijn Dijkstra

Finovate Global Philippines: Insurtech, SuperApps, and Turning Corner Shops into Banking Hubs

Finovate Global Philippines: Insurtech, SuperApps, and Turning Corner Shops into Banking Hubs

Philippines-based digital bank Tonik has entered the insurance business. The neobank announced a new strategic partnership this week with life insurance company Sun Life Grepa Financial, Inc. (Sun Life Grepa).

The partnership will enable Tonik to offer its customers Payhinga, a credit life and disability insurance product. Payhinga gives policyholders access to life and disability insurance with coverage of up to 120% of the loan amount. Further, policyholders can use a two-month payment holiday to reschedule upcoming loan payments in the event of financial difficulty.

“The partnership with Sun Life Grepa will significantly expand our suite of products, and insurance is a highly sought-after addition our customers have been requesting,” Tonik Country President Long Pineda said.

The Philippines’ first, digital-only neobank, Tonik offers loan, deposit, and payment products to consumers via its digital banking platform. The bank teamed up with FC Home Center, launching its Shop Installment Loan with the retailer in August. In June, Tonik announced that it had reached the one million customer milestone. Greg Krasnov (CEO) founded Tonik in 2020.


Speaking of digital banks based in the Philippines, UNO Digital Bank is teaming up with Collabera Digital. A digital engineering services provider, Collabera Digital will help the bank develop and integrate a mini app within superapp GCash.

Collabera Digital provided the strategy to address key issues such as AML and KYC, and built an integrated API platform. The leading superapp in the Philippines, GCash provides a wide range of financial services including money transfer, billpay, savings, investments, insurance, lending, and more. UNO Digital Bank’s integration into GCash will boost access to financial services to individuals across the socio-economic spectrum. The integration also supports the growth of the digital economy via services like mobile banking and digital wallets.

“Our partnership with GCash is significant in scaling and increasing our customer reach,” founder and CEO of UNO Digital Bank Manish Bhai said. “As a greenfield bank, built independently of a larger traditional institution, we have to be innovative in identifying opportunities to grow and expand. GCash, with their 90+ million users and active thrust towards financial inclusion, is a great partner leading to a win-win proposition for both the entities.”

UNO Digital Bank was founded in 2021 and is headquartered in Taguig, a city in the Manila metropolitan area. The institution had total assets of $29 million (PHP 1.78 billion) as of end of year 2022.


What are fintechs in the Philippines doing for small businesses? Merchant fintech platform yufin announced a series of partnerships this week designed to bring new services to Philippines-based merchants. The new additions to yufin’s partnership ecosystem include wholesaler Lots for Less, delivery firm Transportify, and streaming content company Vivamax.

Shubhrendu Khoche, President and co-founder of yufin Philippines, noted that the new partnerships will drive greater digital adoption by businesses throughout the value chain. “As the financial growth engine for small merchants, these new partnerships will create more reasons for digital payment for our small merchants, their shoppers, and suppliers,” Khoche explained.

Founded in 2021, yufin aims to raise the income of 10 million households at least by 50% in the next five years. The company’s partnership ecosystem helps turn small, corner shops into preferred banking and credit hubs for their customers. With a goal of partnering rather than competing with local banks, yufin offers assisted digital financial services that enable underserved communities to leverage technology to improve financial outcomes.


Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • South Africa’s Lipa Payments secured full SDK certification for Tap to Phone from both Visa and Mastercard.
  • Kenyan fintech and mobility solutions company Data Integrated won approval to operate as a Payment Service Provider from the country’s central bank.
  • Stitch, a business payments company based in South Africa, raised $25 million in Series A funding.

Central and Eastern Europe

  • German B2B Buy Now Pay Later payments provider Mondu registered with the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).
  • Polish fintech Verestro integrated the Quicko Wallet money transfer service within the Slack application.
  • Cloover, a climate-based fintech based in Germany, raised €7 million in pre-seed funding.

Middle East and Northern Africa

Central and Southern Asia

  • Indian fintech Aurionpro acquired loan management system Omnifin for $9.8 million.
  • Pakistan-based SadaPay enabled Apple Pay invoicing for freelancers in the country.
  • Indian credit card company Slice earned the approval of the Reserve Bank of India to merge with North East Small Finance Bank.

Latin America and the Caribbean

  • Digital banking and payments solutions provider i2c announced a partnership with Peru’s Banco de Credito.
  • Payments platform Airwallex inked an agreement to acquire Mexico-based payment service provider MexPago.
  • Chile-based fintech Forpay launched a new feature that enables companies to directly charge bank accounts with requiring intermediaries.

Asia-Pacific

  • Vietnam’s Lien Viet Post Joint Stock Commercial Bank (LPBank) teamed up with Temenos to update its core banking platform.
  • International payments provider Nium expanded its B2B travel payments offering in the Asia-Pacific region.
  • BigPay teamed up with payments platform Thredd to support its expansion into Thailand.

Photo by Meo Fernando

Finovate Global UK: Funding Innovation in Rewards, Payments, Lending, and Crypto

Finovate Global UK: Funding Innovation in Rewards, Payments, Lending, and Crypto

London-based fintech and digital wallet HyperJar announced a partnership with digital gift card network, Tillo. The announcement makes HyperJar the first spending app to integrate instant Cashback Gift Cards. The cards enable customers to earn instant cashback of up to 15% from more than 50 top brands including Ikea and Amazon.

In a statement, HyperJar’s Nicola Longfield underscored that not only was HyperJar the first app to integrate the cashback gift cards with a spending account, but also HyperJar was the first to offer “merchant cashback.” This option enables users to choose a higher cashback rate that is specific to a given merchant.

HyperJar’s partnership news comes one month after the company secured $24 million in Series A funding. The round was led by Susquehanna Private Equity Investments. More than 500,000 individuals, including more than 100,000 child cardholders, use HyperJar’s digital wallets.

HyperJar began the year with the appointment of a new CEO, Morgan Stanley veteran Rob Rooney.


A handful of U.K.-based fintechs secured funding this week. Instant payments company Lopay announced a seed investment of $7.3 million (£6 million). Participating in the round were BackedVC, Portage, The Venture Collective, and angel investors. With 20,000 SMEs signed up since launch, the company offers a app that allows small businesses to accept card payments. The app also enables instant access to cleared funds as soon as transactions are completed. Founded in 2022, Lopay plans to use the capital to expand its operations.

Fellow U.K.-based fintech Kennek was another company that locked in seed funding this week. The firm raised $12.5 million in new capital in a round led by HV Capital. Dutch Founders Fund, AlbionVC, FFVC, Plug & Play Ventures, and Syndicate One also participated. The investment follows a $4.5 million pre-seed round closed in February.

Founded in 2021 and headquartered in London, Kennek offers an operating system for lending via a platform that supports the entire lending lifecycle from loan origination to servicing. The company will use the funds to further develop its core technology and add employees.

But the big winner of the week for U.K. fintechs in terms of funding was Untangled Finance. The firm, which operates a tokenized real-world asset (RWA) marketplace, secured $13.5 million in strategic funding in a round led by Fasanara Capital. Founded in 2020, Untangled Finance plans to use the capital for product development and to fuel growth.

The London-based company offers a tokenization platform that facilitates placing traditional financial assets on a blockchain. These real-world financial assets can range from bonds to real estate. Untangled Finance is part of a growing field within the digital asset industry that specializes in asset tokenization, a field that could grow as large as $5 trillion within the next five years, according to a recent report. Note that, along with its investment, Fasanara Capital opened two private tokenized credit pools on Untangled Finance’s platform.


Speaking of DeFi, for those who believe that regulation is the path to greater acceptance of cryptocurrencies, this week’s announcement from the U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) could be considered good news.

Within 24 hours of its new cryptoassets regulatory regime going live, the FCA has issued 146 alerts to non-compliant companies that were promoting cryptoassets to U.K. customers in violation of the new policy, which was announced earlier this year.

In a statement, the FCA urged consumers to check its publicly available “Warning List” before investing or trading in cryptocurrencies. “We take a risk-based approach, so not alll firms of potential concern will be added straightaway,” the FCA explained. At the same time, regulators hope their Warning List will nevertheless help would-be crypto investors “understand where firms’ promotions may be breaking the law and to consider the promotion with the full information available.”


Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Asia-Pacific

  • Coinbase secured a Major Payment Institution license from the Monetary Authority of Singapore.
  • Packworks, a Philippines-based fintech, inked a deal to help SMEs secure microfinancing.
  • Forbes looked at the current challenges facing Chinese fintechs.

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • Nigerian startup Haba InsurTech raised $75,000 in pre-seed funding.
  • Kenya-based Buy Now, Pay Later fintech Lipa Later announced an investment of $3.4 million.
  • Nigeria’s Paystack announced an expansion into offline payments with the launch of virtual terminals for in-person bank transfers.

Central and Eastern Europe

  • Slovakia-based online payment solutions provider TrustPay launched an instant refunds feature.
  • BlackRock secured a minority stake in German digital wealth managment platform Upvest.
  • AML prevention and compliance solutions provider Savy forged a partnership with Lithuanian regtech AMLYZE.

Middle East and Northern Africa

  • MENA-based open banking platform Tarabut partnered with digital lending platform FLOOSS to bring digital loans to Bahrain.
  • Israeli fintech Stampli secured $61 million for its AI-powered accounts payable automation platform.
  • Emirates NBD launched its digital wealth platform.

Central and Southern Asia

  • India-based Axis Bank partners with Fibe to launch the country’s first numberless credit card.
  • Uzum Group, and a group of institutional investors, have pledged to invest $300 million in Uzbekistan’s digital economy.
  • Indian fintech Spice Money announced a collaboration with NSDL Payments Bank.

Latin America and the Caribbean

  • U.K.-based TerraPay teamed up with Bancolombia to enhance cross-border remittances in Colombia.
  • Fiserv acquired Brazilian EFT solution Skytef.
  • Chilean fintech Galgo secured $40 million in funding led by Mexico’s Nazca fund.

Photo by Marianna

Finovate Global Lithuania: The Rise of Regtech in One of the Europe’s Most Dynamic Fintech Hubs

Finovate Global Lithuania: The Rise of Regtech in One of the Europe’s Most Dynamic Fintech Hubs

Lithuania is one of those countries that punches above its weight in terms of fintech innovation. With a population of less than three million, the country boasts more than 260 fintech companies. It is the largest fintech hub in the EU when it comes to licensed companies. These fintechs, numbering nearly 150, represent the majority of fintechs in the country and are licensed e-money institutions, payment institutions, or specialized banks.

Some of the more widely known Lithuanian fintechs include account-to-account infrastructure company kevin and e-money institution Paysera. Revolut Bank is licensed and regulated by the Bank of Lithuania, the country’s central bank.

Given the country’s strength as a fintech hub, it is no surprise that Lithuania holds its own on the regtech front as well. Two of the country’s more active regtechs are AMLYZE, an automated transaction monitoring and risk assessment solution provider that raised $1 million in funding back in May, and identity verification and fraud prevention company iDenfy. Both companies made significant partnership announcements in recent days.


Lithuanian identity verification and fraud prevention company iDenfy will help ECNG Digital, a virtual currency exchange and payment services firm, enhance its onboarding process. The partnership will enable ECNG Digital to deploy a variety of customized identity verification procedures via a KYC solution that combines high accuracy and an optimized user experience. These procedures range from validating government-issued identification documents to live selfie detection to cross-referencing databases. Additionally, iDenfy’s in-house KYC specialists will provide real-time verifications to enhance the accuracy of the technology.

“In the realm of virtual currency exchange and payment services, the real challenge lies in balancing fraud prevention with swift identity verification,” iDenfy CEO Domantas Ciulde said. “Our mission is to guide ECNG Digital on this path, ensuring precision while accelerating understanding.”

ECNG Digital is not the only company turning to iDenfy for identity verification. German online marketplace Quoka and iDenfy also have announced a partnership this week. iDenfy’s verification technology will help Quoka manage its sizable volume of ID verifications, leveraging both biometrics and document recognition.

Headquartered in Kaunas, Lithuania, iDenfy was founded in 2017.


Lithuanian credit union group KREDA has selected Lithuanian regtech AMLYZ as its compliance software partner. The organization is one of the largest credit union organizations in the country and has 14 member institutions. KREDA will leverage AMLYZE’s transaction monitoring technology as part of a modernization of its compliance standards. The technology will also help KREDA with customer risk assessment, case management, and sanctions screening.

AMLYZE CEO and co-founder Gabrielius Bilkštys said the partnership represented the company’s “commitment to helping organizations like KREDA navigate the complex current regulatory landscape, detect financial crime, and ensure the highest standards of compliance.” Founded in 2018, KREDA has $528 million (€0.5 billion) in assets under management.

AMLYZE also recently announced that it was working with Estonian core banking provider Tuum. The two firms have forged a strategic partnership that will give banks and other financial institutions access to “out-of-the-box” compliance that is integrated into Tuum’s core banking, payments, and card modules. Tuum VP of Global Strategic Partnerships Jean Souto said that the collaboration would allow “banks and financial institutions to free themselves from the burden of legacy applications so they can respond quickly to market challenges and new opportunities whilst ensuring compliance with increasingly evolving stringent regulations.”

Founded in 2019, AMLYZE is headquartered in Vilnius, Lithuania.


Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Latin America and the Caribbean

  • Mexican neobank Albo secured $40 million in Series C funding.
  • Issuer-processor Paymentology teamed up with Colombia-based expense management firm Tuily to bring Apple Pay to the company’s SME customers.
  • Uruguay-based digital payments company dLocal announced a pause in its expansion plans.

Asia-Pacific

  • Cross-border payments infrastructure network Thunes expanded its Acceptance network to five markets in southeast Asia: Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand.
  • Currencycloud announced that it has more than tripled its Chinese customer growth rate across the Asia-Pacific since opening its regional headquarters in 2021.
  • Wealth app Sharesies teamed up with New Zealand-based Maori fintech starup BlinkPay.

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • South Africa-based Ukheshe partnered with Xion Global to enable crypto payments on its Scan to Pay app.
  • Nigerian wealth management platform Risevest has acquired digital trading platform Chaka.
  • Revio, a fintech headquartered in South Africa that specializes in payment orchestration, secured $5.2 million in seed funding.

Central and Eastern Europe

Middle East and Northern Africa

  • U.K.-based TangoPay partnered with Israel-based transaction monitoring specialist ThetaRay
  • Israeli-fintech Earnix introduced new Chief Technology Officer Erez Barak.
  • UAE’s Neopay announced a partnership with Alipay+.

Central and Southern Asia


Photo by Natallia Photo

Finovate Global Austria: BehaviorQuant Leverages Predictive Knowledge to Enhance the Investment Process

Finovate Global Austria: BehaviorQuant Leverages Predictive Knowledge to Enhance the Investment Process

What do you as an investor know about the people who manage your money? If your answer to this question is “not very much,” then imagine the challenge of banks and other financial institutions who invest millions of dollars with hundreds, if not thousands of investment professionals.

This is an underdiscussed problem in the investment world: the lack of systematic knowledge about the individuals and teams making investment decisions for millions of individuals, families, and organizations. This can lead to underperformance in terms of investments, as well as inefficient financial advisory.

To this end, we caught up with Thomas Oberlechner, CEO and founder of BehaviorQuant. The company he founded in 2018 gives financial institutions predictive information about the people behind investment decisions. BehaviorQuant leverages behavioral science, machine learning, and automation to learn and analyze the behavior of investment professionals and teams – as well as customers. The insights derived from BehaviorQuant’s automated survey technology enables fund managers to improve their performance and better customize their services to their customers.

Headquartered in Vienna, Austria, BehaviorQuant demoed its technology at FinovateEurope earlier this year.


What problem does BehaviorQuant solve and who does it solve it for?

Thomas Oberlechner: We developed BehaviorQuant because every financial decision is ultimately made by a person or a team. BehaviorQuant solves a core problem that underlies the entire investment industry: we don’t have systematic knowledge about the people and teams behind investment decisions. And that’s true for financial professionals and clients alike.

Financial players – for example, banks, funds, financial advisors – are used to having access to vast amounts of financial data and information. But without BehaviorQuant, they don’t have systematic knowledge and data about the people and teams behind this data.  Yet it is the people and teams behind the visible financial results that play the key role in investing. You can see this everywhere — in the performance of investment teams, in the selection of fund managers, in the efficiency and success of wealth advisors.

For example, in our research we found that 37% of the performance of top decision makers at world-leading financial institutions is based on their behavioral characteristics. However, there is no product to easily measure and quantify the behavioral characteristics of decision-makers. This lack of insight into the behavioral aspects and decision-making tendencies leads to underperformance of asset managers, missed profit opportunities for investors, unrecognized fund manager selection risks, costly staffing mistakes, and churn among dissatisfied clients.

How does BehaviorQuant solve this problem better than other companies?

Oberlechner: Our behavioral finance technology combines the highest level of expertise in behavioral science, personality and decision research with machine learning. For the first time ever, we are capturing the people and teams behind the visible investment decisions. And we give our customers predictive knowledge about themselves and about others – about their own investment teams, about the fund managers they allocate their money to, about their clients. Our solutions solve three distinct problems: first, they help asset managers to improve their performance; second, they help allocators choose the best fund managers; and third, they enable advisors to tailor their advice highly efficiently to each individual client.

As we all know and often forget, markets are made up of people. And financial decision makers have very different ways of processing information, personalities, values, goals, and decision paths. Before BehaviorQuant, there was no systematic knowledge of these aspects. But it is exactly these aspects that are critical to how successfully you steer your course through the rough waters of financial risks and returns.

So BehaviorQuant enables you to efficiently personalize your client advice, optimize your investment decisions, and avoid invisible risks in capital allocation and manager selection.

Regardless of how experienced you are as a financial professional, you will always benefit from a system that gives you systematic, quantitative knowledge about people. Our clients receive predictive knowledge about asset managers, investment teams, and clients. And they make far better decisions — whether they want to interact more effectively with their clients, optimize their team’s decision-making, hire promising professionals, or select compatible external fund managers. BehaviorQuant effortlessly makes them a master of these tasks.

Who are BehaviorQuant’s primary customers. How do you reach them?

Oberlechner: The lack of knowledge about the actual decision makers is pervasive, and it affects three kinds of financial companies in particular. These companies are also our main customers. First, we work with financial companies and asset managers who actively invest in the markets and who want to optimize the returns they generate by improving their own decision processes. Second, we work with family offices and other allocators who use BehaviorQuant to evaluate and select fund managers. And thirdly, we cater to banks and investment advisors who want to excel in advising their clients. They want to advise in a highly personalized way that is truly aligned with their clients.

How do we reach these customers? We’re proud that our first clients found us, not the other way around. Of course, in the meantime, we have grown our sales and marketing team and expanded our outreach efforts by maintaining an active presence on social and other media and attending of relevant conferences — like Finovate. And we’re finding that word of mouth from customers who love our solutions is increasingly supporting our efforts to win new customers.

Can you tell us about a favorite implementation or deployment of your technology?

Oberlechner: We have been receiving enthusiastic feedback from users on both sides of the Atlantic. It makes me and the team happy when they tell us that BehaviorQuant should be a mandatory tool in any decision-making process, when they emphasize how BehaviorQuant’s solutions help them to make better decisions in a systematic and sustainable way, and when they express their enthusiasm about how it helps them deepen their customer relationships.

But my personal favourite deployment of our technology is something that has only very recently come to market. It allows us to impact many more customers without them having to contact our friendly sales team first. Just in time for the 2023 fall season, we’ve introduced an all-new, self-service option for our financial and wealth advisors. They can now effortlessly get detailed information on our website and actively try out BQ Advisory. Then they can purchase single product uses for their work with clients. They can do this directly on the website, on a credit-by-credit basis. This self-service option and the ability to join on a credit basis alongside our attractive licensing offerings have made the of BQ Advisory much easier, especially for the many independent advisors who advise a limited number of clients. And it’s also great for advisors in large institutions who use us already and now want to easily show their colleagues what BehaviorQuant can do.

What in your background gave you the confidence to respond to this challenge?

Oberlechner: I was initially trained as a clinical psychologist in Vienna and always have been fascinated by the differences between people and the way they make decisions. As a university professor for many years, I have focused on how people actually make financial decisions — and the fact that we are all different financial decision makers. I have been fortunate to work with dozens of the world’s leading financial institutions for my research, from Goldman Sachs to Merrill Lynch to UBS. My female cofounder, Dr. Gerlinde Berghofer, and I both have PhDs and strong backgrounds in behavioral science. We have spent years doing research at Harvard, MIT, and Columbia University. We have worked with and studied hundreds and thousands of investment decision makers, from top fund managers to banks, advisors, and financial clients. From academia, we moved first to Silicon Valley and now to Vienna to translate this research into turnkey behavioral technologies for investment professionals.

Our solutions are therefore based on our many years of scientific work with many of the world’s leading investment institutions. And we have gone to great lengths to empirically test their benefits. For example, we have systematically tested the predictive power of BQ Performance with professional portfolio decision makers. While their average annual performance was about 10%, the annual performance of those whom the system predicted would outperform was more than twice as high. To give another example, in a comprehensive study of wealth advisory clients, BQ Advisory identified clients at risk of churn with 90% accuracy. Compare this to the 50% accuracy without BehaviorQuant!

Left to right: Dr. Thomas Oberlechner (CEO, Founder) and Gerlinde Berghofer (COO, Co-founder) of BehaviorQuant at FinovateEurope 2023.

What is the fintech ecosystem like in Austria?  What is the relationship between techs, fintechs, and traditional financial services companies?

Oberlechner: Austria and Vienna have proven to be a fertile breeding ground for the specific type of fintech that BehaviorQuant offers. Vienna historically has played a large role in the sciences that generate a better understanding of individual and collective behavior, from Freud’s psychoanalysis to the Austrian School of Economics. After spending many years in San Francisco developing fintech, we felt very fortunate that the Austrian government offered us a generous grant to bring BehaviorQuant here. 

I would describe the fintech industry as friendly and highly innovative, with some already well-known international players with roots in Austria like n26 and Bitpanda. Collaboration between traditional financial institutions and fintech startups has been a major driver of innovation in the Austrian market. Established banks are turning to fintech partnerships to expand their service offerings, improve the customer experience, and stay competitive in the digital age. Vienna has become a bit of a fintech hotspot, attracting both local and international talent and investment. Fintech companies benefit from Vienna’s consistently high rankings in international surveys of capitals’ attractiveness. The city offers an ecosystem of co-working spaces, incubators, and accelerators that foster collaboration and help fintech startups succeed.

At BehaviorQuant, we maintain close personal relationships with many of Austria’s “traditional” financial firms and banks, and we also have a very active bridge to the U.S. based on our history and our strong network on both the East and West coasts.

You demoed at FinovateEurope in London earlier this year How was that experience?

Oberlechner: Wow! We are absolutely thrilled by the incredible response we’ve received for our products! The interest and the number of new connections we’ve made were really overwhelming. We received amazing support from the organizers throughout the conference, as well as during in the preparation stage for our participation and presentation. The feedback from participants gave us an incredible boost of confidence and motivation. Thanks again to the team for a great and wonderfully rewarding experience!

What are your goals for BehaviorQuant and what can we expect in the months to come?

Oberlechner: Our goal with BehaviorQuant is simple: we want financial decision makers around the globe to become better decision-makers though our systematic behavioral data and decision support. And we want to become the world’s leading provider of predictive behavioral data for financial professionals and investment companies.

I briefly mentioned that we recently launched a self-service payment option for our advisory solution. In the coming months, exciting new self-service options are in the queue for the analysis of financial professionals with BQ Performance. This will allow individual investment professionals to easily get started with a comprehensive analysis of their personal untapped performance potential, as well as possible behavioral bias and performance blockers — before using it in the wider context, for example, with their entire team or company. So stay tuned for our upcoming releases!


Photo by Alesia Kozik

Finovate Global: Showcasing International Alums at FinovateFall

Finovate Global: Showcasing International Alums at FinovateFall

FinovateFall is right around the corner (September 11 through September 13). If you still haven’t registered for our annual autumn fintech conference in New York this month, there’s no better time than the present. Visit our FinovateFall 2023 hub today and save your spot.

This week’s edition of Finovate Global highlights companies headquartered outside of the U.S. that will be demoing their latest innovations on the Finovate stage in just a few days. Get to know them here, then join them in New York live and in person for FinovateFall!


Connect Earth

Founded in 2021 and headquartered in the United Kingdom, Connect Earth enables financial institutions to offer their retail and SME customers insights into the environmental impact of their spending. LinkedIn.


Engage People

Headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Engage People is a loyalty network that enables program members to pay with points directly at checkout. The company was founded in 2015. LinkedIn. X (Twitter).


eSelf

eSelf is building the next generation of client-financial institution interaction, enabling human-like conversations and efficient personalization. Founded in 2022, eSelf is headquartered in Israel.


FinTech Insights

Fintech Insights offers a comprehensive digital banking research platform. The company’s technology helps FIs build strategies and launch new features faster. Headquartered in London, the company was founded in 2010. LinkedIn. X (Twitter).


Flybits

Founded in 2013, Flybits enables FIs to deliver personalized digital banking experiences across mobile, web, and the Metaverse. The company is headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. LinkedIn. X (Twitter).


Fundica

Headquartered in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, Fundica is a government funding platform used by some of the largest FIs in North America to acquire and retain clients at scale. Fundica was founded in 2017. LinkedIn. X (Twitter).


Jaid

Jaid is an AI-powered platform build to enable the intelligent automation of business communications. Founded in 2018, Jaid is based in London, U.K. LinkedIn. X (Twitter).


LemonadeLXP

Headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, LemonadeLXP is a digital growth platform that helps FIs and fintechs create effective training and support tools to maximize their investment in their technology. The company was founded in 2019. LinkedIn. X (Twitter).


MacroMicro

Founded in 2016 and headquartered in Taipei, Taiwan, MacroMicro empowers over three million investors worldwide to make personalized investment decisions through dynamic and insightful charts. X (Twitter).


NayaOne

NayaOne gives banks a single point of access to hundreds of fintechs, digital sandboxes, fintech-as-a-service offerings, and datasets. Headquartered in London, U.K., NayaOne was founded in 2019. LinkedIn.


SESAMm

Headquartered in Metz, France, and founded in 2014, SESAMm is an AI insight and ESG risk detection specialist serving the financial services industry. LinkedIn. X (Twitter).


Zero Bank Design Factory

Zero Bank Design Factory is developing and operating a banking system for Japan’s first digital bank, Minna Bank. Founded in 2019, the company is headquartered in Fukuoka, Japan. X (Twitter).


Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Central and Southern Asia

Latin America and the Caribbean

Asia-Pacific

Sub-Saharan Africa

Central and Eastern Europe

Middle East and Northern Africa

Finovate Global Hong Kong: A Roadmap to the Future of AI and DLT

Finovate Global Hong Kong: A Roadmap to the Future of AI and DLT

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) unveiled its Fintech Promotion Roadmap today. The goal of the document is to provide a strategic outlook for the coming year to promote fintech adoption and innovation across Hong Kong’s diverse financial services ecosystem.

The top takeaways? The Roadmap highlights three business verticals: wealthtech, insurtech, and greentech – as primary. The planning document also underscores both artificial intelligence (AI) and distributed ledger technology (DLT) as a pair of enabling, if not revolutionary, technologies that will play a major role in future innovation in financial services.

Critically, the Roadmap shows the eagerness of the HKMA to take a proactive, hands-on approach to fintech adoption and innovation in Hong Kong. To this end, the HKMA has announced a range of initiatives it plans to adopt over the next 12 months. These efforts include a fintech knowledge hub; sponsored events, roundtable discussions, and dialogues to foster collaboration; as well as seminars and training sessions to provide cross-sectoral information exchange and the opportunity for continuous learning. The HKMA will also facilitate educational content creation, including use-case videos and research reports, to help broaden understanding of the opportunities of fintech adoption.

HKMA Deputy Chief Executive Arthur Yuen called the Roadmap “a beacon for the entire financial services industry.” He added, “We’re looking beyond banking, casting a wide net to encompass sectors like insurance, wealth management, and capital market activities. Through synergies with our financial regulators and continuous engagement with stakeholders, our vision is a resilient, inclusive fintech ecosystem for Hong Kong.”

Yuen said that the underpinning philosophy of the Roadmap is “collaboration”.

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority is the region’s central banking institution. Founded in 1993, the HKMA is the product of the merger between two agencies – the Office of the Exchange Fund and the Office of the Commissioner of Banking. A key enabler of innovation in fintech and financial services in the region, the HKMA developed and launched a Faster Payments System in 2018 and began offering virtual banking licenses in 2019. Eddie Yue Wai-man was appointed Chief Executive in that year; he is the third CEO in the HKMA’s 30-year history.


In more good news for the region, Hong Kong has a new fintech unicorn. Micro Connect, a fintech that facilitates institutional investments in Chinese micro- and small businesses, raised $458 million in funding earlier this month. The Series C round gives the startup $578 million in total capital raised, and a brand new valuation of $1.7 billion.

Micro Connect’s statement did not list the investors involved in the funding. However, according to Forbes Asia, Baillie Gifford – a Scottish investment company – as well as returning investors Sequoia China, Lenovo Capital, Vectr Fintech, and Dara Holdings, were among those who participated.

Micro Connect will use the capital to enhance the market structure of its Micro Connect Financial Asset Exchange (MCEX) platform. MCEX leverages blockchain technology to enable small businesses to access financing in return for an agreed-upon percentage of the business’s daily revenue over a specified period of time. The scheme helps growing businesses secure the capital they need without having to take on additional debt. MCEX is scheduled to go live in August.

Micro Connect has facilitated investment in more than 2,400 stores and 169 brands across China. Charles Li (Chairman) and Gary Zhang (CEO) founded the company in 2021.


Finovate has brought its international fintech conference to Hong Kong three times: in 2016, 2017, and 2018. Here are some of the local companies that demoed their technology live on stage at FinovateAsia in Hong Kong.

  • AApay Technology
  • Chekk
  • Peakford Electronics
  • Proximiti
  • Velotrade

That said, Finovate has been hosting fintech conferences for audiences in the region since 2012. Here are a few more Hong Kong-based Finovate alums that demoed at our FinovateAsia events in Singapore and online.

  • Advanced Merchant Payments
  • Matchi.Biz
  • Mobexo
  • Modtris

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Middle East and Northern Africa

Central and Southern Asia

Latin America and the Caribbean

Asia-Pacific

Sub-Saharan Africa

Central and Eastern Europe


Photo by Nitin Sharma

Finovate Global India: Conversational AI Comes to UPI, Debt-Collection-as-a-Service Scores $50 Million

Finovate Global India: Conversational AI Comes to UPI, Debt-Collection-as-a-Service Scores $50 Million

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) announced a number of new fintech initiatives this week. Among the more interesting was a plan to bring AI-powered, conversational payments to the country’s UPI (Unified Payments Interface) system.

The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) launched the platform in 2016. Today, UPI has more than 300 million monthly active users in India. There are also 500 million merchants who use the platform to accept payments. With UPI, users can link multiple bank accounts to a single mobile app, and then make real-time, P2P transactions via mobile device or smartphone. Analysts expect daily transaction volume on UPI to reach one billion by 2026-2027.

The proposal would enable users to initiate payments from within both chat and messaging apps. “As Artificial Intelligence (AI) is becoming increasingly integrated into the digital economy, conversational instructions hold immense potential in enhancing ease of use, and consequently reach, of the UPI system,” the RBI press release read. “It is, therefore, proposed to launch an innovative payment mode viz., ‘Conversational Payments’ on UPI, that will enable users to engage in a conversation with an AI-powered system to initiate and complete transactions in a safe and secure environment.”

Conversational Payments will be available initially in Hindi and English, with other Indian languages to be added. The technology will be available via smartphones and feature phone-based UPI channels, which the Reserve Bank of India believes will lead to broader adoption and further financial inclusion. To this end, the RBI has also proposed to bring Near Field Communications (NFC) technology to its UPI-Lite on-device wallet. Launched last fall, UPI-Lite is designed to facilitate small value transactions and now processes more than ten million transactions a month.


An investment of $50 million has given Indian debt collection software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform Credgenics a valuation of $340 million. Accel, Westbridge Capital, Tanglin Ventures, Beams Fintech Fund, and other strategic investors participated in the Series B round.

Company co-founder and CEO Rishabh Goel said that the capital would do more than just help the firm expand into new markets. “This funding not only accelerates our growth, but also enables us to make a meaningful impact on the economic landscape of countries, unlocking new opportunities for financial well-being,” Goel said.

Founded in 2019, Credgenics currently serves more than 100 private banks, non-bank financial companies, fintechs, and asset reconstruction companies. The company’s debt resolution platform provides a suite of solutions including digital collections, collections analytics, litigation management, agent performance management, and a field collections mobile app. The technology leverages AI-driven intelligent automation and machine learning to bring greater efficiency to the collections process.

Credgenics handles 11 million retail loan accounts and touched an overall loan book worth $60 billion in fiscal year 2023. The company became operationally profitable this spring. This summer, Credegnics announced a partnership with Indonesia-based lender Investree. The company also was recognized as the Best Selling Loan Collections Platform in IBS Intelligence India Sales League Table for the second year in a row.


There are more than 3,000 recognized fintech startups in India. And the Indian government is giving itself a gentle pat on the back for helping make that happen.

Minister of State for Corporate Affairs (independent charge) Rao Inderjit Singh provided the report to Parliament as part of the Startup India initiative. Launched by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade in 2016, this initiative establishes the criteria that confers recognition by the Department. These factors include data of incorporation, as well as revenue and profit benchmarks.

Singh pointed to the “Fintech Entity Framework” as an example of one of the actions taken by the government – in this case the International Financial Services Centres Authority (IFSCA) – to promote the country’s fintech startup ecosystem. This framework includes a comprehensive scheme of grants for startups, sandboxes, proof-of-concepts (PoC), accelerators, and more.

Singh also credited the government for the success of an initiative which streamlined beneficiary account opening and direct benefit transfers, and improved access to multiple financial services applications. The initiative is called the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY), meaning “The Prime Minister’s Public Finance Scheme,” and it set a new world record for account openings upon its launch in 2014. This spring, the initiative reached a major milestone of more than $28 billion (₹2 lakh crore) in deposits.


Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Central and Eastern Europe

Middle East and Northern Africa

Central and Southern Asia

Latin America and the Caribbean

Asia-Pacific

Sub-Saharan Africa


Photo by Sagar Soneji