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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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

• Insurance FDI limit was raised to 74% but the response from foreign insurers has been lukewarm 18 months since the limit increase.
• India's Enforcement Directorate (ED) unfroze the bank accounts of WazirX.
• Navi, the financial firm founded by Sachin Bansal, received approval from SEBI, the securities regulator, to launch its IPO.
• SBI Bank became India's third bank to cross a market cap of INR 5tn ($ 62.5bn) after HDFC Bank and ICICI Bank.
• Amazon Pay's India revenues grew 16% YoY to INR 2,000cr ($250mm).

🚀 Product Launches

• Zaggle, an employee benefits startup, launched Zoyer, a business payments product.
• M2P*, a banking and payments infrastructure startup, launched a core lending suite.

💰 Financing Announcements

1. DotPe, a fintech and SaaS for small businesses startup, raised $55mm.

ACQUISITION:

1. Kotak Securities acquired FundExpert Fintech, a multi-asset wealth management platform for independent financial advisors (IFA) and mutual fund distributors.

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🌏 Asia

📰 Market Updates

• DBS Bank launched DBS BetterWorld, a metaverse project on The Sandbox, a metaverse experience by Animoca Brands.
• Trust Bank, a digital bank formed by Standard Chartered and FairPrice Group, claimed to have registered 100K customers within 13 days since launch.
• iLex, a Singaporean Platform as a Service for wealth, launched an office in London with plans to expand across EMEA.
• Emerging markets, led by Vietnam and Philippines, drove global crypto adoption in the last year, according to a report by Chainalysis.
• Singapore announced plans to overhaul its financial services industry by 2025.

💰 Financing Announcements

• Fazz, an Indonesian SME fintech startup, raised $100mm.
• BillEase, a Philippine BNPL startup, raised $20mm in debt.
• Reku, an Indonesian crypto exchange startup, raised $11mm.
• Sender, a Singaporean crypto wallet startup, raised $4.5mm.
• Neem, a Pakistani embedded finance startup, raised $2.5mm.
• StashAway, a Singaporean wealth management startup, 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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