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).

Editor’s Note: If you’re an early-stage startup founder raising equity, I may be able to help - reach out to osborne@thisweekinfintech.com.

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🦉🏆 Tweets of the Week

🇮🇳 India

📰 Market Updates

• Credit Card sends declined 1.5% MoM in April, 2022.
• India's Enforcement Directorate has frozen the accounts of 100 fintech firms.
• Uni, a credit card startup, raised $6.7mm in debt from Stride Ventures.
• Indian fintech sector could reach $150bn in valuation by 2025, according to India's Minister of State for Finance.
• Amazon Pay claimed that it has an acceptance network of 8.5mm small businesses and 4mm retail outlets.
• RBI claimed that there are 11.8mm payment acceptance devices across India, including 411K POS devices and 11.4mm QR based POS.

🚀 Product Launches

• Kiya.ai launched banking services in its own metaverse - Kiyaverse.
• Cashfree partnered with EasyTransfer for cross border education payments.
• KredX partnered with Tradewind Finance to provide working capital finance for international businesses.
• The Indian government launched a marketplace of the governments credit schemes for users - 13 schemes and 125 lending institutions are on the platform.
• ZestMoney partnered with ICICI Bank to launch card-less EMI (paylater) for ICICI Bank customers.

📝 Regulatory Updates

• RBI (central bank): Released the list of eight entities shortlisted to be in the RBI Regulatory Sandbox for MSME Lending. Recommended that UPI be linked to credit cards starting with RuPay. Increased the e-mandate limit for recurring transactions from INR 5,000 ($66.7) to INR 15,000 ($200.0). Expected to roll out regulations for digital lending startups.

💰 Financing Announcements

1. CRED, a credit card bill payment startup, raised $80mm at $6.4bn valuation.
2. Kissht, a consumer credit startup, raised $80mm.
3. FlexiLoans, a SMB finance startup, raised $28mm.
4. Jiraaf, an alternate investment startup, raised $7.5mm.
5. Moneyboxx, a listed NBFC company, raised $3mm through private placements.
6. Arth, a micro merchant financing startup, raised $2.5mm.
7. Aeldra, an immigrant neobanking startup, raised an undisclosed amount.
8. MoneyyApp, a fintech for creators, raised an undisclosed amount.

ACQUISITION:

1. Carta, a US based ESOP management startup, acquired ZenEquity, an Indian ESOP management startup.

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🌏 Asia

📰 Market Updates

• Malaysian Banks are warning users of crybercrimes specifically targeting android users.
• Akulaku, an Indonesian fintech company, is raising its stake in Bank Neo Commerce, an Indonesian digital bank.
• Binance is expanding to Philippines.
• South Korea's ruling party is urging crypto exchanges to develop industry guidelines for listing and delisting digital tokens.
• ANT Group launched ANext Bank, its digital wholesale bank, in Singapore.
• Binance Pay partnered with TripleA to launch global cryptocurrency payments.

💰 Financing Announcements

1. Pintu, an Indonesian crypto trading startup, raised $113mm.
2. Capital C, a Singaporean lending startup, raised $54mm.
3. Salary Hero, a Thai earned wage access startup, raised $2.8mm.
4. Zipmex, a Singaporean crypto exchange, raised an undisclosed amount.

🌏 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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