Hi fintech friends, I'm Osborne, investor in early stage startups.

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🧐🏆 Posts of the Week

(Note: Neither TWIF nor I endorse any views in the tweets highlighted above.)

🌁 Image of the Week

The Guinness World Record for the largest collection of valid credit cards is 1,638 and was achieved by Manish Dhameja (India) in Hyderabad, Telangana, India, on 30 April 2021. Source.

🇮🇳 India

📰 Market Updates

1. BharatPe reduced its losses to Rs 149cr ($17.5M) in the Apr to Dec 2024 period (9M FY25).
2. Bank lending in FY25 (Apr 24-Feb 25) slowed to 11% YoY, compared to 21% in the similar period in FY24.
3. Truhome Finance, a housing finance company, raised $100M in commercial borrowing from DBS and SMBC banks.
4. UPI was down for millions of users nationwide on Wed, 26th Apr after a technical issue was detected.
5. Payments Council of India (PCI) wrote to India's Prime Minister to introduce MDR on UPI for large merchants and RuPay debit cards.
6. Jio Financial Services invested $117M in its lending business.
7. Paytm joined Razorpay, Cashfree and other payment aggregators in discontinuing its partnership with Juspay for payment orchestration.
8. India's Employee Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) will introduce ATM and UPI withdrawals of user funds by Jun, 2025.
9. India's Finance Ministry asked the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), a global money-laundering watchdog, to reduce compliance requirements for cross-border payments made through its homegrown Unified Payment Interface (UPI) system.
10. India's Finance Ministry decided to discontinue its Gold Monetisation Scheme because of the evolving market price of gold.
11. Federal Bank will increase its stake in Aegis Federal Life Insurance from 26% to 30%.
12. The National Housing Bank is holding surprise inspections at housing finance companies to ensure proper functioning after the recent fraud discovery at Aviom Housing Finance.
13. Loans to new-to-credit customers declined by 21% as lenders tightened issuance of consumption-driven loans.
14. AlgoBulls, an algo trading startup, grew revenue by 4.4x YoY to INR 238cr ($28M) in FY24

🚀 Product Launches

1. PhonePe launched two-wheelers and four-wheelers insurance plans.
2. Bajaj Finserve partnered with Ignosis to begin distributing its financial products via Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC).
3. Juspay open sourced its payment orchestration product, after pushbacks from several payment gateways.
4. Axis Bank partnered with JP Morgan to launch 24/7 global USD clearing.
5. India's Financial Intelligence Unit created a lab to analyze currency declaration forms and financial data to detect money laundering and terror financing.
6. Mobikwik, a payments and lending company, set up a stock broking subsidiary to launch stock broking.

📝 Regulatory Updates

1. RBI (central bank): Revised priority sector lending norms, increasing loan limits, expanding eligibility criteria and raising targets, effective 1st April, 2025. Imposed a INR 75lacs ($90K) penalty on HDFC Bank for non-compliance with KYC norms.
2. IRDAI (insurance): Discovered lapses in claims settlement practices at Star Health Insurance.

💰 Financing Announcements

1. Cashfree, a payment company, raised $53M.
2. Smallcase, an investment management startup, raised $50M.
3. Lendingkart, an SME finance company, raised $29M.
4. Findi, a white label ATM company, raised $28M.
5. Abound, a Times Internet payments startup for Indian diaspora in US, raised $14M.
6. AxiTrust, a surety bonds issuance startup, raised $2.6M.
7. OneStack, a banking SaaS startup, raised $2M.

ACQUISITION:

1. Zaggle, an employee spend management startup, acquired 51% in EffiaSoft, a billing SaaS company.
2. Zaggle, an employee spend management startup, acquired 38% in Mobileware Technologies, a payment technology company, for $2.7M.
3. TATA Communications acquired 100% of Findi, a white label ATM company (missed this news from 3rd Feb, 2025).

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🌏 Asia

📰 Market Updates

1. Alipay+ integrated with LankaPay in Sri Lanka to launch Chinese payment acceptance across merchants in Sri Lanka.
2. PayMongo, a Philippine payment gateway co., partnered with Mochi, a Philippine billing and AR platform, to launch bill payments and payment acceptance solutions.
3. BigPay in Malaysia partnered with Thredd to launch payment services in Thailand and other countries in SEA.
4. The Indonesian Rupiah has fallen to its lowest level against the US Dollar since 1998, driven by concerns over the government's fiscal policies and global economic uncertainties.
5. Indonesia's startup ecosystem raised 66% lower funding YoY in 2024 at $438M, according to Deal Street Asia.
6. Bank Jago in Indonesia reported 50% YoY growth in customers at 15.3M at the end of 2024.
7. SEC, Thailand's securities regulator, found that OKX, a crypto trading platform, offered digital asset trading services in Thailand without a license.
8. DBS Group emerged as the leading contender to acquire a controlling stake of around 86% in Indonesia's Panin Bank, currently held by Australia's ANZ Group and the Gunawan family.
9. senangPay, a Malayasian payments company, integrated with Pine Labs to launch instalment payment plans for its users.
10. BC Payments, a Singapore-based subsidiary of Luxembourg-licensed bank Banking Circle, received in-principle approval to operate as a Major Payment Institution (MPI).
11. Fundiin, a Vietnamese BNPL startup, announced a strategic partnership with Visa to enhance its credit-scoring model.

💰 Financing Announcements

1. Pace, a Singaporean BNPL startup, raised $40M.
2. Funding Societies, a Southeast Asian SME Finance startup, raised $25M.

ACQUISITIONS:

1. GoBear, a Singapore-based insurance and banking marketplace, acquired AsiaKredit, a consumer lending startup.

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