Hi fintech friends, I'm Osborne, Principal at EMVC!
Hope you had a great start to the year! Wishing you a productive 2024!
Please enjoy all the news and updates from the past week in today’s edition. If you feel TWIF brings you value, please share it with your friends (and maybe suggest they subscribe too).
🧐🏆 Posts of the Week
Who'd have predicted Nifty 🥈 (of 10 countries) on all timeframes > 5 years, 🥇 on 2 and 3 years.
Source: 360ONE 2024 Outlook pic.twitter.com/i52oqeC5Iv— Anoop (@CalmInvestor) January 10, 2024
My hot take is that Indian companies often adopt automation not to reduce labour costs but to prevent leakage.— Ritesh Banglani (@banglani) January 9, 2024
Payments is an incredible space due to the uncapped TAM players have, even today across all the large peers we would be doing like 500bn per annum in cross border payments - One large global bank processs nearly $10 trillion payments daily across 120+ currencies in 160+…— Prajit Nanu (@prajitn) January 7, 2024
Payment gateways folks during the RBI ban: " Payments is dead"...." This market has already been captured"..." Neo-banking and Credit has way more potential now"
Payment gateway folks after RBI lifted the ban: "LFGG"..."Take 0% MDR"..." We're here to win"..." Payments industry…— Pete (@PeteJaison) December 27, 2023
(Note: Neither TWIF nor I endorse any views in the tweets highlighted above.)
📈 Chart of the Week
🇮🇳 India
📰 Market Updates
Paymatepartnered with the National Bank of Oman to modernise and launch its B2B payments system.
HDFC Bankreported a 62.4% YoY growth in its gross advances for the quarter ended Dec 2023 at $297bn with deposits growing to $267bn, 27.7% YoY growth.
Slice* reported INR 847cr ($100mm) in revenue in FY23 (ended Mar 2023), a 200% YoY growth.
Fino Payments Bank applied with RBI to convert to a Small Finance Bank.
RBI Governorwarned Indian financial institutions against relying on AI and algorithms for automated credit disbursal assessment.
Total Deposits with banks reached a record $2.4tn as of 29th Dec, 2023. This is 2x the deposits held with banks since Sept, 2016 and +13.2% YoY.
Scapia, a cobranded travel credit card startup, slashed credit limits significantly for a section of its users.
Digit, a general insurance company, reported INR 5,146cr ($622mm) in revenue in FY23 (ended Mar, 2023).
🚀 Product Launches
GetVantage, a revenue based finance startup, launched an INR 250cr ($30mm) SaaS accelerator fund II for revenue based financing.
Velocity, a revenue based finance startup, launched an INR 300cr ($36mm) debt fund for B2B SaaS firms.
Jio PlatformslaunchedSwiffyLabs, a B2B fintech infra platform for banks and financial institutions.
PhonePe, Paytm, SBI and others launched cross border UPI payments between Singapore and India.
💰 Financing Announcements
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🌏 Asia
📰 Market Updates
Boost Bank and Aeon Banklaunched their digital banking offerings in Malaysia.
Thai Prime Minister launched a $14.5bn digital wallet based stimulus package where 50mm citizens will receive $285 to spend in local communities.
Singapore's Money Lock feature is used by 38K account holders to "lock" $2.41bn in funds, inaccessible for digital transfers for protection against cyber fraud.
Tokyo's Nikkei index closed above 35,000 for the first time in 34 years.
Fintech startups in SEA raised $2bn in funding, -65% YoY from $5.9bn raised in 2022. The number of deals also reduced by 50%, with 142 deals in 2023 compared to 288 in the previous year.
According to a survey, 25% of Indonesian users prefer using BNPL as a payment option and 86% of Indonesian users made a form of digital payment.
Salmon, a Philippine fintech startup, received approval from the country's central bank to acquire a controlling stake in Rural Bank of Sta. Rosa.
Total funding into Indonesian FinTech startupsdropped 51% to $765mm in 2023, from $1.6bn in 2022.
Ant Group is planning to acquireMultiSafepay, a Dutch payments firm, for $200mm.
💰 Financing Announcements
Kommunal, an Indonesian banking digitisation startup, raised $5.5mm.
🌏 Sponsor on TWIF
Bonus (since a lot of you like the Goa picture)! Sending you a postcard from Krabi, Thailand :) Spent my new year's here.
If you’ve made it this far - thanks! As always, you can always reach me at [email protected]. I’d genuinely appreciate any and all feedback. If you liked what you read, please consider sharing or subscribing.
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