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

• Jio is spinning off its financial services business and listing the same on Indian stock markets. (Missed this news from last week).
• InfiBeam Avenues received an in-principle approval from RBI to operate as a payment aggregator.
• The National Stock Exchange (NSE) of India issued notices to multiple fantasy stock trading apps to immediately stop using its data for virtual gaming platforms that are based on real-time movement of shares.

📝 Regulatory Updates

• Cashfree launched a digital lending payout tool.
• ZestMoney partnered with IIFL Finance to build a $1bn loan book in lending to consumers.

🚀 Product Launches

• SEBI (securities): Reduced the face value of retail debt securities from INR 10lacs ($12,500) to INR 1lac ($1,250).

💰 Financing Announcements

• Kinara Capital, a small business lending company, raised $25mm.
• ProgCap, a small business pay later startup, raised $10mm.

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🌏 Asia

📰 Market Updates

• Singapore's High Court stated that NFT's meet several legal requirements to be classified as property.
• Moxa, the financial division of Astra Group in Indonesia, is launching investment and ecommerce platforms.
• Vietnam’s card payments market is expected to be $37.6bn this year.
• Atome, a BNPLcompany, achieved THB 1Bn ($26.3mm) in total gross merchandise value (GMV) since its launch in Thailand last September.
• According to a report, 58% of Vietnamese digital customers use fintech solutions for convenience.
• mBridge, a blockchain platform developed by BIS along with the central banks of Hong Kong, Thailand, China and UAE for cross border payments, successfully completed its pilot testing.
• Stripe launched its payment services business in Thailand.
• Nium partnered with Zero Hash, a B2B2C crypto infrastructure platform, for Nium’s U.S. customers to leverage crypto to fiat payment solutions.
• MAS, Singapore's central bank, proposed tighter restrictions for retail crypto traders.
• ANT Group added GCash from Philippines, TrueMoney from Thailand and AlipayHK from Hong Kong for mobile wallets payments in Singapore.
• A report on Japanese mobile app usage claimed that payment app sessions account for nearly 75% of total fintech sessions from 2021 through H1 2022.
• A report by Google, Temasek and Bain & Co. said the regional online spending economy set to hit US$200 billion this year.

💰 Financing Announcements

• Reap, a Hong Kong based digital payments startup, raised $40mm.
• Former executives of Tinkoff, a Russian digital bank, raised $16mm to launch digital banking in Philippines.
• AWST, a Singaporean NFT startup, raised $1.7mm.
• BayaPay, a Malaysian fleet expense 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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