Hi fintech friends, I'm Osborne, Principal at EMVC.

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).

🧐🏆 Posts of the Week

(Note: Neither TWIF nor I endorse any views in the tweets highlighted above.)

📈 Chart of the Week

Source: RBI Annual Report FY2024 (ended Mar, 2024)

🇮🇳 India

📰 Market Updates

1. Stripe announced that it will temporarily move to an invite-only model for new account sign ups in India, citing regulatory changes.
2. As per RBI, bank fraud cases grew 165% YoY to 36,075 in FY24; credit card and online frauds increased 425% YoY to INR 1,457cr ($175mm); Total frauds reported in FY24 declined by 47% YoY to INR 13,930cr ($1.7bn).
3. Unclaimed deposits with banks grew 26% YoY to INR 78213cr ($9.4bn) in FY24.
4. IIFL Securities will launch a HNI and UHNI wealth management platform.
5. Oxyzo reported revenue of INR 903cr ($108mm) and INR 291cr ($35mm) of PAT in FY24.
6. BharatPe and PhonePe settled out of court on a trademark case over the Pe suffix.
7. Paytm withdrew its general insurance license application and will focus on distribution-only model.

🚀 Product Launches

1. PhonePe launched secured lending products marketplace with 15 lending partners.
2. Jio launched JioFinance, an app for UPI payments, loans and insurance products.
3. Google Wallet partnered with Pine Labs to launch gift card management for its users.
4. Airpay partnered with Wix to launch payment acceptance for Wix' India users.
5. Razorpay launched Q-Zap, an offline payment acceptance platform.

📝 Regulatory Update

1. IRDAI (insurance): Introduced several amendments to health insurance products, including having to process cashless health insurance claims within 1 hour (excellent summary here).
2. RBI (central bank): Introduced guidelines for the establishment of self regulatory organisations (SRO's). Launched 3 platforms 1) PRAVAAH - a platform for regulatory application, validation and authorisation; 2) a retail direct mobile app to invest in G-Secs; and 3) a fintech repository. Released its Annual Report for FY24.

💰 Financing Announcements

1. Turno, an EV financing startup, raised $6mm.
2. Vegapay, a lending infrastructure startup, raised $5.5mm.
3. Wealthy*, a wealth management startup, raised $5.4mm.
4. Coversure, an insurance marketplace, raised $4mm.
5. AbleCredit, an AI-based underwriting startup for small business, raised $1.5mm.
6. CirclePe, a rental property financing startup, raised $1mm.
7. Gravity, a banking infra and SaaS startup, raised $1mm.

ACQUISITIONS:

1. BharatX, a lending infrastructure startup, acquired Zenifi, a healthcare financing startup.

1-min Anonymous Feedback: Your feedback helps me improve this newsletter. Click UPVOTE 👍🏽 or DOWNVOTE 👎🏽

🌏 Asia

📰 Market Updates

1. SeABank in Vietnam partnered with Visa to launch digital payment acceptance in the country.
2. Aspire, a Southeast Asian digital bank for businesses, launched its services in Hong Kong and received license in the country to operate as a Money Service Operator.
3. XTransfer, a Chinese B2B cross border payments company, partnered with Terrapay, a Singaporean cross border payments company to expand its payment acceptance capabilities.
4. Julo, an Indonesian personal finance startup, announced that it provided insurance products to 200K users within 3 months of its partnership with Qoala.
5. Triple-A, a crypto payment gateway, enabled PayPal USD (PYUSD), on its gateway.
6. Tonik Bank in Philippines partnered with OpenAI to launch ChatGPT based customer service features on the app.
7. Bursa Malaysia, a Malaysian stock exchange, launched API Gateway for brokers and participating organisations to integrate investor account management processes.
8. DMM Bitcoin, a Japanese crypto exchange, said it lost 4,503 bitcoin worth $308mm in an unauthorised leak.

💰 Financing Announcements

1. Beppo, a Philippine accounting automation startup, raised an undisclosed amount.

ACQUISITION:

1. Beppo acquired JuanTax and five other accounting firms in Philippines.

🌏 Sponsor on TWIF

Mail us at sponsor@thisweekinfintech.com

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.

1-min Anonymous Feedback: Your feedback helps me improve this newsletter. Click UPVOTE 👍🏽 or DOWNVOTE 👎🏽

Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn