Hi fintech friends,

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).

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🦉🏆 Tweets of the Week

🇮🇳 India

📰 Market Updates

• SarvaGram, a rural finance company, claimed to cross $23mm in AuM as on April, 2022 with ARR of 6-7mm for FY22.
• RBI released a report stating that India might overcome Covid losses by FY34-35.
• India's unemployment rate rose to 7.83% in April, 2022, compared to 7.6% in March, 2022. Urban unemployment was 9.22% in April, 2022 compared to 8.28% in March, 2022.

🚀 Product Launches

• IndiaMart partnered with Tazapay to help its exporters with cross-border payments.
• Fable Fintech, a financial inclusion startup, partnered with XeOPAR, a cross border payments company, for inward remittances.

💰 Financing Announcements

• Digit General Insurance, a general insurance company, raised $55mm at $4bn valuation
• Open, a small business banking startup, raised $50mm at a unicorn valuation.
• KaleidoFin, a financial inclusion startup, raised $15mm.
• Freed, a consumer debt relief startup, raised $2.8mm.
• Bliv.club, an NFT financialisation startup, raised an undisclosed amount.

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🌏 Asia

📰 Market Updates

• The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) released a consultation paper to discuss key policy and design issues for introducing retail central bank digital currency.
• Shopee, a Singaporean ecommerce platform, received approval from the Brazilian central bank to operate as a payment service provider.
• NetBank in Philippines partnered with V5Pay, a Philippine payments startup, for small business payment acceptance.
• Shinhan Financial Group, a South Korean financial major, acquired a 10% shareholding in Tiki, a Vietnamese ecommerce company.
• Peppermint, an Australian mobile banking startup, received Electronic Money Issuer license in Philippines.
• South Korean fintech startups are "disappointed" by the country's incoming President's view on cryptocurrencies.

💰 Financing Announcements

1. KoinBasket, a Singaporean crypto investment startup, raised $2mm.

(there were no other funding announcements this week. Did I miss any? Email me.)

Sponsored Content

Identity verification is trickier than ever — SSNs are leaked all the time, government IDs and other documents are easily Photoshopped, and deepfakes even make it easy to “take” someone’s face. It may be tempting to ask users for a ton of info during onboarding to better identify fraudsters, but the more friction you add, the less likely users are to convert. We’ve learned a lot helping companies like Square, BlockFi, and Brex find the perfect balance between risk management and conversion optimization, and now we’re sharing our learnings with you.

🌏 International

Please find our global coverage and consider subscribing.

• US and Global, written by Nik Milanovic published on Friday’s and Saturday’s.
• Europe and UK, written by Michael Jenkins published on Monday’s.
• Latin America, written by Christine Chang.
• Africa, written by Benjamin Dada.

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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