Hello Fintech friends,
November was a chaotic month for China with the riots over the continued zero-covid policy. People have raised a lot of concerns on the negative economic impact of covid controls. One most recent examples of it is that Alibaba’s annual Singles Day has experienced the slowest ever sales growth.
(Source: Al Jazeera)
With the gloomy economic outlook in mind, Chinese fintechs are making more efforts on global expansion and new product launches, especially around lending and consumer financing products. You will read about them in this month’s newsletter.
Enjoy the read!
Yours,
Ning
News
Chinese authority is poised to impose a fine of more than $1B on Jack Ma’s Ant group, potentially ending its two-year long regulatory battle
PBOC’s push to share user data with state-owned credit-scoring agencies is met with resistance from Chinese tech giants like Tencent and Meituan
Tiktok Shop Indonesia has reportedly partnered with Shanghai-based payments fintech iPaylinks (Source: LinkedIn Post); TikTok also has finally entered the US eCommerce space with the launch of Tiktok Shop
Venture Financing
Ant Group’s Consumer Finance Unit raises $1.5B, and HFI (an investment group owned by Hangzhou government) became the second largest stakeholder.
JD.com’s fintech unit aims to win Beijing’s approval for its HK IPO as soon as end of the year. It failed once earlier this year.
UponeShare split from Tiger (Nasdaq: TIGR) and raised angel round from investors like Xiaomi and Sinoation Ventures. The size of the deal was not disclosed.
Product Launches
Anext Bank, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Ant Group, plans to offer loans to small and medium-sized businesses across Singapore
Korea-based Kakao Pay and Malaysia-based Touch n’ Go are available in China with the new Alipay partnership
HK-based virtual bank ZA Bank partners with Wise to offer international transfers to HongKongers
Lithuania-based fintech Paysera has partnered with Airwallex to open USD payment corridor to China
Lianlian Global launches partnerships with three European fintechs (Spanish Ritmo, UK-based YouLend and Iwoca) to offer lending services
Chinese fintechs are catching the BNPL trend with Airwallex’s partnership with Atome, PingPong’s partnership with Klarna and the launch of Ant Group’s Ant Bank Paylater
