India’s SME-focused digital challenger bank Open is getting ready for its mid-August launch with a round of seed funding. Open calls itself “Asia’s first SME neo-banking start-up” and is using the same business model as Tide in the UK and Finnish start-up Holvi (recently acquired by BBVA). With its launch date in sight, the bank […]
India has seen the launch of its fourth payments bank, Fino Payments Bank. For its core banking system, the bank uses Profile from FIS, delivered on a hosted basis.
Excitement is thin on the ground as the net profit for India-based Infosys dipped ever so gently in its latest financial results. For the quarter ended 30 June 2017, the financial systems vendor announced that Q1 net profit was $541 million, a quarter-on-quarter (QoQ) decline of 0.4%. Although for year-on-year (YoY), it displayed growth of […]
Fintech zeitgeist! Every Monday, we might look back at last week; look ahead to this week; share a few thoughts (our own or others); or discuss anything that catches our eye. This week, Soumik Roy discusses India’s Goods and Service Tax (GST) and whether it’s an opportunity for fintech firms. First discussed by a committee […]
The National Payments Corporation of India is reporting positive momentum for transactions across its domestic payment networks for the fiscal first quarter of 2018. Its goal is to hit 11 billion transactions by the end of the fiscal year.
The Central Bank of Azerbaijan has chosen to conduct its auctions for foreign exchange (FX) instruments and deposits through Bloomberg’s auction platform. The platform manages primary market operations, and has been recently extended to include FX instruments (spot and outright) and deposits, in addition to its pre-existing suite of fixed income and repo products. Ali […]
Denmark took a back seat at Money20/20 Europe as the lively fintech scenes in China and India fell under the spotlight with a wealth of information and stats.
Job-cutting spree continues at the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) – 443 jobs are to go from its business loans department. Many of these will be moved to India.
India-based HDFC Bank has selected Silicon Valley start-up ZineOne to improve its digital banking offerings. The bank will deploy ZineOne’s Customer Interactions Hub (CIH), which will establish a single customer identity and “bring real-time, contextual, and omni-channel functionality” to interactions across businesses, applications and digital properties including web applications, mobile apps, digital wallets, website, kiosks […]
Turkey’s largest private bank, Isbank, has unveiled its entrepreneurship programme for fintech start-ups in the country. Since forming an innovation team within its Digital Banking Unit, the bank says it has become “much closer” to tech entrepreneurs in the republic. The innovation team is working remotely at Kolektif House Levent (a co-working space for Turkish […]
Mobile payments switch TerraPay has partnered with Yes Bank to enable real-time international money transfers to bank accounts in India – with the Indian migrant market firmly in their sights. TerraPay provides its clearing and settlement service, and via a “Rupee Drawing Arrangement”, its network partners can make the transfers to bank accounts in the […]
Turkey-based Garanti Bank’s new mobile app has won BBVA’s “Open Talent Ideas” fintech competition. BBVA launched the competition in February, and yesterday (5 June) the ten finalists presented their idea to experts from BBVA’s senior management. The winning idea was GarantiStore, a mobile app able to identify products automatically. Through image recognition techniques or by […]
Six graduating start-ups from Startupbootcamp FinTech Mumbai have secured pilots with banks and corporates such as RBL Bank, ICICI Bank and State Bank of India (SBI). At Startupbootcamp’s demo day at the Royal Opera House in Mumbai, 11 start-ups showcased technologies in financial services to more than 400 guests. Propositions included SME banking, blockchain, digital […]
The money’s rolling in for fintech – as this round-up follows hot on the heels from 30 May. This latest report features Zopa, RateSetter and Niyogin Fintech. The plans of peer-to-peer (P2P) lender Zopa to launch a new digital-only bank in the UK are going well as it has completed a £32 million funding round […]
Myanmar-based Ayeyarwady Bank (AYA Bank) has signed for Misys’ Fusionbanking Essence core banking platform.
The First MicroFinance Bank in Afghanistan (FMFB-A) has chosen Accuity for regulatory compliance screening of its customer accounts and cross-border transactions. Accuity says it will help FMFB-A enhance the performance of its compliance operations by eliminating manual procedures and speeding up the end-to-end process with its automated regulatory list updates and real-time screening of transactions […]
Astana International Financial Centre (AIFC) has chosen Nasdaq to power Kazakhstan’s nascent stock exchange, the AIFC Exchange. The exchange is targeted to launch in late-2017 and will initially trade equities and fixed income with other asset classes for future phases. Within the framework of the agreement, the Nasdaq Matching Engine will be implemented and go […]
Indian payment solutions provider and Pay Award-winning ItzCash Card Ltd. has a new main backer. U.S.-based Ebix, which sells on-demand software and e-commerce services, has taken an 80 percent stake in the company for $120 million.
State Bank of India (SBI) has deployed the “largest payment gateway for cards’ e-commerce transactions”, according to Shiv Kumar Bhasin, CTO of the SBI group. It processes ten million transactions per day, with 2,000 transactions per second (TPS) of peak load processing capabilities. This “beats the business volumes processing capabilities of a lot of leading […]
India-based Essel Home Loans, a new housing finance subsidiary of Essel Finance, has opted for Nucleus Software’s FinnOne Neo Cloud for digitisation of its loan lifecycle. According to Nucleus, Essel Home Loans is keen to capitalise on the Government of India initiatives such as Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY) – which is designed to build […]
India’s Paytm has at last got final approval from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and is set to unveil its Paytm Payments Bank on 23 May. The bank was set to launch in August 2016, and teamed with IT services integrator Wipro for its plan. No reasons were given for the delay. As reported […]
Indian IT firm Wipro has developed nine blockchain-based solutions for banking financial services and insurance (BFSI), manufacturing, retail and consumer goods industries. The solutions were defined, designed and co-developed with Wipro’s clients in its blockchain innovation lab. In terms of fintech and insurtech, these concepts include trade finance and P2P insurance for the “sharing economy” […]
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is telling the nation’s banks to operate their ATM networks only after the machines receive a Windows update to protect them from the WannaCry ransomware affecting systems across the globe. The computer malware has spread across 150 countries and takes over users’ files with a demand of $300 to […]
Consumers in India are increasingly turning to physical and digital gift cards. A new study showed that providers issued some 50 million gift cards over the past year, up from 20 million from the previous 12 months, an increase of 150 percent.
The loss problems for India’s Intellect Design Arena have abated as it has revealed a profit after tax of INR 106 million ($1.65 million) in its Q4 results. As Banking Technology reported last year, Intellect’s lack of profit worsened as it disclosed a loss after tax of INR 138 million ($2 million) for the quarter […]
Fintech zeitgeist! Every Monday, we might look back at last week; look ahead to this week; share a few thoughts (our own or others); or discuss anything that catches our eye. This week, Soumik Roy asks – will Paytm become India’s WeChat? Ever since demonetisation, electronic payments in India have been all the rage. In […]
North East Small Finance Bank (NESFB), the first bank of its kind in the northeast of India, is gearing up for launch in early June. For its technology, it’ll be using an outsourced banking and payments platform provided by FIS.
Temenos is looking to conquer the core banking software markets of China and Japan.
Myanmar’s First Private Bank (FPB) has chosen the Misys FusionBanking Essence core banking system for a major tech revamp. The bank, which received the first banking licence in Myanmar in 1992, will upgrade its retail, corporate and digital offerings. FusionBanking will replace the bank’s “partially computerised distributed branch system”. Dr Sein Maung, chairman at FPB, […]
Societe Generale is calling for Indian start-ups with the launch of Catalyst 2.0 – its accelerator programme to promote innovation. This is its second edition, and Societe Generale Global Solution Centre (SG GSC), an innovation hub of the banking group in India, will run Catalyst 2.0 from May to August 2017. During the ten-week programme, […]
Asian investment bank Nomura plans to tap into India’s lively fintech scene with the launch of its “Voyager – Nomura Fintech Partnership” – including a new JPY 10 billion ($91.7 million) fund to provide support to start-ups. Nomura is inviting entrepreneurs to participate in the programme to build solutions for capital markets and investment banking […]
State Bank of India (SBI) has centralised its trade finance operations across 25 countries on Misys’ Fusionbanking Trade Innovation platform. Misys’ partner in India, Encore Theme Technologies, assisted with the implementation.
Facebook-owned WhatsApp is reportedly looking to get into mobile payments and has picked India as the best place to start.
A team of British politicians and fintech business leaders are in India as they seek to strengthen trade and investment between the two nations. At the 9th UK-India Economic and Financial Dialogue, held today (4 April) in Delhi, the UK’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Hammond, and the Finance Minister of India, Arun Jaitley, discussed […]
The world is not short of money… for some. Our latest fintech funding round-up features Aeries Financial Technologies, CASHe, Perfios and Ayopop. There’s never a shortage of fintech news in India. Aeries Financial Technologies, which owns the app-only lending platform CASHe, has raised $3.8 million in Series A funding from an investor group led by […]
Meezan Bank in Pakistan is partnering with 1LINK Guarantee, an interbank payment network service, to issue PayPak branded debit cards across the nation. PayPak is Pakistan’s “first” domestic payment scheme that aims to provide an “indigenous alternative to international payment schemes”. Ariful Islam, deputy CEO of Meezan Bank, says it “will, inshallah [God willing], develop […]
Fintech zeitgeist! Every Monday, we might look back at last week; look ahead to this week; share a few thoughts (our own or others); or discuss anything that catches our eye. This week, Soumik Roy looks at how India has quite a lot of fintech activity in its retail market. Did you notice? For the […]
Grab, a ride-hailing and mobile payments platform in Southeast Asia, will acquire Indonesia-based O2O (online to offline) ecommerce platform Kudo. The Kudo team and platform will be integrated with Grab’s proprietary mobile payments platform, GrabPay. According to Grab, Kudo’s O2O platform allows Indonesia’s unbanked consumers to shop online by connecting them with merchants and service […]
Pakistan-based Khushhali Microfinance Bank is to overhaul its technology with Temenos. The project will be delivered by National Data Consultants (NDC), Temenos’ partner and integrator in the region.
Turkey’s largest bank, Isbank, has introduced a digital mortgage process where users can follow up credit pre-approval, the actual appraisal and overall credit process 24×7. In the bank’s “instant transaction” area, users’ mortgage applications are pre-approved within a “few seconds” and users can upload title deed images and pay the appraisal fee online to start […]
