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 or debt, I may be able to help - reach out to osborne@thisweekinfintech.com.

Want to be a This Week in Fintech - Asia Sponsor? Reach fintech founders, industry professionals and enthusiasts. Email me at sponsor@thisweekinfintech.com.

🦉🏆 Tweets of the Week

📊 Stat of the week

14 out of 496 large-cap US equity funds are run by all women teams. 49 funds were “female-managed” funds i.e. run by teams where one-third of the portfolio managers were women. Rest were managed by all male teams.

Female managed funds on average delivered returns of -57 basis points compared with their benchmarks. Whereas, all male funds saw average returns of -164bp compared to benchmarks. (Source)

🇮🇳 India

📰 Market Updates.

1. SBI Bank is yet to refund $22.2mm charged to Jan Dhan accounts as UPI processing fees before 2020.
2. Tamil Nadu and Karnataka state governments set up FinTech Governing Councils in a bid to make states a FinTech hub.
3. Niti Aayog, a Government of India think tank, released a discussion paper on licensing and regulating digital banks.
4. PayU is now a fully certified token requestor and token service provider for Mastercard and Visa.

🚀 Product Launches

1. ICICI Bank launched a Trade Emerge, a digital banking product for exporters and importers.
2. Winvesta launched UPI-based remittances for foreign investments.
3. IIFL Securities partnered with Quicko, a taxation startup, to provide tax filing services to investors and traders.

📝 Regulatory Updates

• RBI (central bank): Released a caution against various Co-operative societies using the word “Bank” in their names.

💰 Financing Announcements

1. Upstox, a stock investing startup, raised $25mm at a $3.4bn valuation.
2. Indifi, a SMB finance startup, raised $20mm.
3. Altum Credo, a housing finance startup, raised $12mm.
4. DronaPay, a payment and lending fraud detection startup, raised $500K.
5. Recordent, a digital debt collections startup, raised $400K.

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🌏 Asia

📰 Market Updates

1. Swiss Re partnered with Baidu on autonomous vehicle insurance.
2. Standard Chartered launched ‘Saadiq’ a $100 million fund to support Islamic finance companies in Malaysia.
3. OCBC Bank in Singapore is considering to set up a digital asset exchange.
4. Smartpay, a Japanese payments platform, launched a BNPL product.
5. Pathao, a Bangladeshi super app, launched a BNPL service for food delivery.
6. Vroom, a Bangladeshi vehicle services startup, launched a co-branded credit card in partnership with Eastern Bank Ltd.
7. A new report claims that Vietnam's internet economy could grow to $220bn in GMV by 2030.
8. StraitsX launched XIDR, an Indonesian rupiah denominated stablecoin.
9. Japan is set to test run a new digital currency backed by bank deposits.
10. Gojek integrated with Bank Jago, owned by Gojek, and enabled bank account opening within the Gojek app.
11. DBS Singapore faced a two day outage of its digital banking services. MAS is mulling supervisory actions on DBS.
12. Coda Payments, a Singaporean payments company, seeks to IPO at a valuation of $4bn.
13. Warburg Pincus slashed Ant Financial’s valuation by 15% to under $200bn.
14. Axie Infinity, the Vietnam-based blockchain game, sold a plot of digital land for $2.3mm.

💰 Financing Announcements

1. Bank Bumi Arta, a local Indonesian bank, raised $52mm from Ajaib, a stock investment startup, for a 24% shareholding.
2. Pace, a Singaporean BNPL startup, raised $40mm.
3. Pintek, an education finance startup, raised $7mm.
4. BlockchainSpace, a Philippino "guild hub for play-to-earn communities", raised $3.75mm.
5. GIMO, a Vietnamese payroll services startup, raised $1.9mm.
6. Nudge, a Japanese credit card startup, raised an undisclosed

Acquisition:

1. Stockbit, an Indonesian stock trading startup, acquired a local brokerage firm.

🌏 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, published on Friday’s.

🧐 Looking for context, deep dives and further insights?

Read the latest edition of Fintech Inside, also authored by me. New editions get published every Sunday at 9AM IST.

📜 Notable Nuggets

1. What Paytm’s listing flop show tells us about IPO success stories
2. Cutting through the hype of decentralised finance
3. Peak Credit Card
4. Incentives – How will Visa Amazon Play Out?
5. The Rise of Media-First Investors
6. Terra: The Moon Also Rises

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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