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Hello fintech friends,
Hope you are doing well. Last week was really busy for the Greater China fintech space.
Obviously, the biggest news that continues to get uncovered with more details is the massive Binance hack. Beyond that, we saw that Opay halted its US IPO while PhotonPay raised again, Pyvio pocketed another major payment license, and Crypto.com is shutting down its HK retail operations. Tons of new product and partnership announcements in the card space too, from Thunes massively upgrading its pay-to-card capability to OKX’s Mastercard stablecoin card.
Read on!
- Ning
The Rundown
🚀 Product Launches
Thunes partnered with UnionPay International to launch high-capacity, instant cross-border payouts directly to UnionPay cards in mainland China.
Sunrate introduced its programmable Agentic Card at Hong Kong FinTech Week to enable AI agents to execute multi-currency business payments within predefined spending parameters.
Standard Chartered launched a tokenized deposit service in Hong Kong to support 24/7 corporate treasury management and digital asset settlements.
OKX launched a self-custodial stablecoin payment card operating on the Mastercard network.
Anchorpoint partnered with the Solana Foundation to deploy its licensed Hong Kong dollar stablecoin, HKDAP, natively on the Solana blockchain.
Samsung Electronics partnered with Tencent and Woori Bank to enable Samsung Wallet Money users to pay at WeChat Pay merchant locations across mainland China.
OCBC integrated Alipay+ Travel Treat reward vouchers directly into its digital banking app for overseas QR payment discounts.
Crown Agents Bank partnered with YeePay to provide streaming wholesale foreign exchange services in G10 currencies.
💸 Fundraises
PhotonPay raised $40 million in a Series C funding round led by Blockchain Capital to advance its stablecoin payment infrastructure.
OPay withdrew its planned $304 million US initial public offering following a regulatory inquiry linked to Chinese authorities.
🏛️ Policy & Regulation
Pyvio secured a Major Payment Institution (MPI) license from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to provide regulated cross-border and domestic payment services across the Asia-Pacific region.
Crypto.com announced plans to shut down its retail-facing consumer app in Hong Kong while continuing to pursue institutional licensing in the region.
Animoca Brands secured regulatory approval from the Financial Services Regulatory Authority of the Abu Dhabi Global Market to manage investment funds from the UAE.
Binance engaged in regulatory discussions with Malaysian authorities to resume licensed operations in Malaysia following a multi-year ban.
Editor’s Picks
I know it’s a bit of a late news at this point, but I am still amazed by how sophisticated this whole Binance $6.3B hack operation is. I mentioned that stolen cryptocurrency accounts for up to 13% of North Korea's entire Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and North Korea drives over half of global crypto theft in one of my earlier newsletters as a fun fact. Well, they just scored big again!
This time, the hackers bypassed Binance’s massive defenses not through brute-force math, but by tricking a developer into a fake job interview and sneaking malware right onto an engineer's machine. Host Frank Chaparro breaks down the anatomy of the heist with Hannah Arnold, COO at Turnkey, Jonathan Awad, CEO and Co-Founder of Baselayer, and Amethyst Martinez, reporter at The Financial News Network and what it means for the future of crypto custody:
See you next week!
