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

• The RBI reportedly recommended to the Finance Ministry to ban cryptocurrencies, but the Finance Minister called for global support to regulate it.
• HDFC AMC's Prashant Jain became the first fund manager to manage INR 1tn (~13bn).
• Niti Aayog released a report proposing "Licensing and Regulatory Regime for Digital Banks in India".

🚀 Product Launches

• Slice* launched Purchase Power, a term loan product.
• Indipaisa, an agent driven financial product distribution, partnered with Signzy, to digitally onboard SME's.
• Flobiz, a small business neo banking startup, launched eInvoicing on its product MyBillBook.

📝 Regulatory Updates

• SEBI (securities): Released a consultation paper proposing a regulatory framework for India's bond market. Released a consultation paper proposing a new regulatory framework for "execution-only" services in direct plans of mutual funds.
• RBI (central bank): Announced the exit results of its 2nd regulatory sandbox cohort for cross border payments.

💰 Financing Announcements

1. Niyo, a neobanking startup, raised $30mm.
2. Backspace Tech, an UPI dispute and charge back management startup, raised $450K.

ACQUISITION:

1. M2P, a banking and payments infrastructure startup, acquired Syntizen, an identity verification startup.

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🌏 Asia

📰 Market Updates

• The central banks of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand are working to integrate their respective QR-based payment systems.
• MAS, Singapore's central bank, plans to widen the scope of crypto regulations to cover more activities.
• FTX is in advanced talks to acquire Bithumb, a South Korean cryptocurrency exchange.
• The Philippine Central Bank's governor said it's not looking to ban cryptocurrencies.
• OneConnect, an associate of Ping An Group, partnered with Pismo, a Brazilian tech company, to launch OneCosmo, a digital banking SaaS platform.
• Zipmex, a Singaporean crypto exchange, halted withdrawals due to market conditions. The Thai regulator issued queries to Zipmex on its withdrawal freeze.
• Google Wallet launched as a standalone app in Singapore.
• Home Credit Vietnam, the Vietnamese arm of the Netherlands based financial firm, partnered with Tiki, a Vietnamese ecommerce company, to launch BNPL.

💰 Financing Announcements

• XLD Finance, a DeFi infrastructure startup, raised $13mm.
• Fairbanc, an Indonesian BNPL for micro-merchants startup, raised $4.8mm.
• CrediLinq, a Singaporean credit underwriting startup, raised $2.6mm.
• MFast, a Vietnamese financial inclusion neobanking startup, raised $2.5mm.
• Djoin, a micro finance SaaS startup, raised $1mm.

🌏 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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