Hi fintech friends, Osborne here!

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).

Don’t forget to share with fellow fintech friends!

🦉🏆 Tweets of the Week

🇮🇳 India

📰 Market Updates

1. India's public company market capitalisation dropped below $3tn to $2.99tn from high of $3.2tn in Oct/Nov, 2022. US is at 41.8tn, China is at $10.7tn, Japan is at $5.6tn, Hong Kong is at $5.4tn and France is at $3.0tn.
2. Paytm said that it will need to get a government approval for FDI to operate its payment aggregator business.
3. Bajaj Finance is looking to bid for Commonwealth Bank of Australia's Indonesian business.
4. PhonePe reportedly called off its plan to acquire ZestMoney, for $200mm to $300mm, over due diligence concerns.
5. Acko received approval from IRDAI (insurance regulator) to launch a life insurance business.

🚀 Product Launches

1. Klub* partnered with Simpl to disburse Simpl's D2C merchants revenue based finance.

📝 Regulatory Updates

1. NPCI (retail payments body): Introduced 1.1% interchange rate on prepaid merchant transactions above INR 2,000 ($24.4).
2. SEBI (securities): Approved ASBA (Application Support for Blocked Amount) facility for secondary market trading.

💰 Financing Announcements

1. Nimbbl, a one-click check startup, raised $3.5mm.
2. Sriram Finance, a large lending company, raised $150mm in debt.

ACQUISITIONS:

1. Loantap, a lending startup, acquired Unofin, a healthcare financing startup.

1-min Anonymous Feedback: Your feedback helps me improve this newsletter. Click UPVOTE 👍🏽 or DOWNVOTE 👎🏽

🌏 Asia

📰 Market Updates

• Trust Bank, a Singaporean digital bank of Standard Chartered and FairPrice Group, claimed to have 500k customers within seven months of launch.
• OCBC Bank reportedly disbursed SGD 3.5bn in sustainable loans since launch in March 2021.
• ANT Group invested $188mm in its Singaporean digibank.
• 43% of Singaporeans own cryptocurrency.
• A report by Malaysia's securities commission revealed that crowd funding platforms helped companies raise $359mm in 2022.
• Alibaba will be spinning off its business to six units.
• SBI Sumishin Net Bank, which went public at a valuation of $1.4bn, became the first Japanese digital bank to go public.
• MAS released a statement regarding DBS Bank's service disruptions stating that the disruption is unacceptable and that DBS has fallen short of MAS' expectations.
• Central banks of Singapore and Malaysia announced plans to link its payment systems.

💰 Financing Announcements

1. Roojai, a Thai insurance startup, raised $32mm.
2. Thunes, a Singaporean cross border payments startup, raised $30mm.
3. C88, a Southeast Asian lending marketplace startup, raised $28mm.
4. Advance, a Philippine earned wage access startup, raised $16mm.
5. Qoala, an Indonesian insurance startup, raised $7.5mm.
6. Mobee, an Indonesian crypto exchange, raised an undisclosed amount.
7. SMFG from Japan acquired a 15% stake in VPBank, a Vietnamese bank, for $1.5bn.

ACQUISITIONS:

1. Advance, a Philippine earned wage access startup, acquired BravoHR, a Vietnamese earned wage access startup.

🌏 International

Please find our global coverage and consider subscribing.

• US and Global, written by Nik Milanovic.
• Europe and UK, written by Michael Jenkins.
• Latin America, written by Christine Chang.
• Africa, written by Emeka Ajene.
• China written by Ning Ye.
• Policy written by Mohammad Hamdy.

And of course, our podcast series - Beyond Two Percent and Hey Fintech Friends.

If you’ve made it this far - thanks! As always, you can always reach me at osborne@thisweekinfintech.com. I’d genuinely appreciate any and all feedback. If you liked what you read, please consider sharing or subscribing.

1-min Anonymous Feedback: Your feedback helps me improve this newsletter. Click UPVOTE 👍🏽 or DOWNVOTE 👎🏽

Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn.