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).

✨ Thank you for joining us in Jakarta!

Super grateful to the 140+ of you who joined us in Jakarta on 26th Sept. We had excellent conversations with fintech leaders, including for the panel discussion. We hope to continue bringing great meetups, excellent conversations and collaborative learning among peers building in Jakarta's financial ecosystem.

Sign up here to get notified regarding future meetups in your city.

🐦🏆 Tweets of the Week

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

📈 Chart of the Week

(Source)

🇮🇳 India

📰 Market Updates

1. Zerodha reported INR 6,500cr ($828mm) in revenue and INR 2,950cr ($349mm) in FY23 (ended Mar, 2023).
2. Startup funding in India fell by 29% to $1.5bn in Q3 2023 which is the least funded quarter in 5 yrs.
3. Demand for Rupay Credit Cards reportedly increased by 37% QoQ in Tier 2, 3 and 4 cities, according to a report by ZET Consumer Insights.
4. There has been a reported 62% increase in the number of API attacks on India's financial sector as of 30th June, 2023, according to a report by Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In).
5. PaytmMoney reported INR 131cr ($16mm) in revenue in FY23 (ended Mar, 2023).

🚀 Product Launches

1. Genpact partnered with AWS to launch GenAI driven financial crime investigative tools.
2. Fixed, an investments startup, launched Fixed Invest, an FD product aggregator.
3. CRED launched CRED Garage, a vehicle management suite of features.

📝 Regulatory Updates

1. RBI (central bank): Gave IFC approval to increase its stake in Federal Bank from 1.34% to 9.7%.

💰 Financing Announcements

1. DataSutram, a location based analytics for banking startup, raised $3mm.

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🌏 Asia

📰 Market Updates

1. Rapyd launched card acquiring product in Singapore.
2. Thunes, a global payment firm, launched its payments acceptance network in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines.
3. Visa partnered with ABHI, a Pakistani earned wage access startup, and YellowPaper, a Visa owned payments company, to launch account to account payments in UAE.
4. Vietnam, Philippines, and Brunei will join other major Southeast Asian economies to integrate and launch cross border QR code payment system.
5. FOMO Pay, a Singaporean payments startup, launched Digital Singapore Dollar (purpose bound money) acceptance pilot for small merchants in Singapore.
6. Stripe launched a slew of new products in Southeast Asia for its small business customers.
7. TikTok Shop was reportedly handling $6Bn+ worth of transactions in Indonesia in 2023, before its ban in the country, and $17B+ in Southeast Asia.
8. The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and French, Swiss, and Singaporean central banks successfully tested cross-border trading of wholesale CBDCs.
9. Hong Kong's securities regulator plans to publish a list of crypto exchange license applicants.

💰 Financing Announcements

1. Funding Societies, a Singaporean small business finance startup, raised $27mm in debt.

ACQUISITION:

1. Roojai, a Thai insurtech startup, acquired DirectAsia, a motor insurance arm of US Based Hiscox.
2. CommEx, Russia's largest crypto exchange, acquired Binance' Russian business.

🌏 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.

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