Hi fintech friends,

Happy New Year, 2023! Hope you had a great start to the year!

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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. Pine Labs reportedly generated INR 1,017crs ($124mm) in operational revenue in FY22 (ended Mar, 2022).
2. Fable, a cross border payments SaaS startup, is partnering with public sector banks for its cross border product.
3. National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) allowed non-resident Indians from select countries with NRE/NRO bank accounts in India to access UPI payments.
4. India's government approved INR 2,600 cr ($317mm) incentive scheme to be paid to acquirers for RuPay and low-value UPI transactions.
5. Startup funding in India was down 33% YoY to $24bn in 2022.
6. Enkash, a corporate credit card startup, received in-principle approval from RBI for a payment aggregator license.
7. Mastercard's Farm Pass, a digital ecosystem of financial products for smallholder farmers across India, crossed 1mm users.
8. Ola shut down Avail Finance and integrated it with Ola Money.
9. WazirX, a crypto exchange company, crossed $100mm in revenue in FY22.
10. Zerodha, a discount brokerage company, crossed $604mm in revenue and $255mm in net profit in FY22.

🚀 Product Launches

1. Porter, a logsitics startup, launched small ticket loans and insurance products for its driver partners.
2. Northern Arc Capital launched NuScore, a credit score for micro finance institutions.

📝 Regulatory Updates

1. SEBI (securities): Allowed AMC's to launch passive Equity Linked Savings Scheme (ELSS) funds.

💰 Financing Announcement

1. Banksathi, an agent-driven financial product distribution startup, raised $4mm.
2. Digio, an ID verification digital signing and recurring payments startup, raised an undisclosed amount.

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🌏 Asia

📰 Market Updates

1. Jack Ma is reportedly giving up control of ANT Group.
2. Grab Vietnam added e-wallet ZaloPay to its ride-hailing app.
3. Inypay, a Singaporean neobank, is expected to launch by June, 2023.
4. Wagely, an Indonesian earned wage access startup, launched bill payments feature.
5. DigiAsia, an Indonesian fintech startup, is going to list its shares on NASDAQ.
6. Xendit, an Indonesian payment startup, launched in Malaysia via an investment in Payex.
7. Right Choice Capital Group, a Singaporean payments company, acquired a rural bank in Philippines.
8. The central banks of Thailand and UK signed a partnership to cooperate on fintech and sustainable finance.
9. The World Bank group is issuing $250mm to Indonesia to strengthen the country's digital identity program.
10. Thailand's securities regulator (SEC) is questioning Zipmex, a crypto exchange, whether it violated the country's digital assets regulations.
11. Pasar Polis, an Indonesian insurance startup, launched a D2C insurance brand - Tap Insurance.
12. Bank of Thailand, Thailand's central bank, released a consultation paper setting up a plan to issue up to 3 virtual banking licenses initially, by 2024 for launch in 2025.
13. SentBe, a Korean fintech company, launched USD international remittances to 50 countries.

💰 Financing Announcements

1. Actvy.ai, a Singaporean B2B BNPL startup, raised $12mm.
2. Qritive, a Singaporean healthcare and fintech startup, raised $7.5mm.
3. FLIK, an Indonesian one-click checkout startup, raised $1.1mm.
4. Payex, a Malayasian payment service startup, raised an undisclosed amount.

🌏 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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