Hi fintech friends, Osborne here!

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: FT Partners)

🇮🇳 India

📰 Market Updates

1. IDFC First Bank reported 44% YoY growth in customer deposits to INR 1.65tn ($20.1bn) and 32% YoY growth in Net Interest Income (NII) to INR 3,950cr ($ 481mm).
2. The Chairperson of International Financial Services Centres Authority (IFSCA), the financial regulator for GIFT City, made the following announcements:
   • Two banks grew assets to $4bn.
   • Expects to release payment systems regulations for instant payments.
   • Working on a payments settlement system, expects to go live by Q2 FY2024
   • In the process of enabling direct listing on the exchanges in GIFT City
   • GIFT Nifty derivatives clocked the highest ever single-day turnover of $16 billion.
   • 45 fintech startups are admitted to IFSCA Fintech Framework, of which 10 are in the sandbox stage and rest are in the regulatory sandbox stage.
   • 78 fund managers are registered in GIFT City and registered 68 funds with target corpus of $19bn, committed funds of $5bn and $1bn deployed in India.
3. Zeta, a financial infrastructure company, reported INR 816crs ($98mm) in annual revenue (+32.7% YoY) for the year ended Mar, 2023.
4. Worldline, a french payment company, expanded to India with launching its direct merchant acquisition business in India.
5. LIC Housing Finance reported INR 6753cr ($ 823mm) in revenue in Q2 FY24 (ended Sept, 2023).
6. Protean eGov, a governance infra and government services company, is launching its IPO on 06th Nov, expected to raise INR 490cr ($ 60mm).
7. Prudential London is planning to launch a health insurance business in India and is reportedly seeking partners.

🚀 Product Launches

• Zerodha launched Zerodha Fund House and two mutual funds under the AMC.
• SaveIN, a surgery financing startup, launched a doctor discovery platform.
• CCAvenue UAE, the UAE arm of CCAvenue, launched a QR code payment acceptance solution.
• SBI Card partnered with Reliance Retail to launch a Reliance SBI cobranded card for commerce.

📝 Regulatory Updates

1. RBI (central bank): Released new regulations for payment aggregators wanting to engage in cross border payment settlement.

💰 Financing Announcements

1. Virdhi Home Finance, a housing finance company, raised INR 150crs ($18mm).
2. 1% Club, a personal finance startup, raised $1.2mm.
3. Easiloan, a housing finance startup, raised an undisclosed amount from Housing.com.

ACQUISITIONS:

1. AngelOne, a stock broking company, acquired DStreet Finance, a social trading startup.
2. AU Small Finance Bank is merging with Fincare Small Finance Bank.

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🌏 Asia

📰 Market Updates

1. Agoda, a Southeast Asian OTA, expanded its partnership with Mastercard for B2B travel vendor payments.
2. Hong Kong central bank is planning to launch the 2nd Phase of its CBDC e-HKD.
3. MAS barred DBS Bank from launching new business and reducing its branch and ATM network.
4. Stripe expanded its partnership with JCB Payments of being the default payment scheme for merchants in Europe, Singapore and Hong Kong.
5. Alta, a Singaporean alternative assets marketplace, expanded to Hong Kong via partnerships and received approval from MAS for a Capital Markets Services (CMS) custodial license.
6. Visa launched a trial tokenised deposits for B2B payments of Hong Kong's e-HKD CBDC.
7. Boost, a Malaysian e-wallet and credit startup, partnered with EasyEat to launch micro financing for Malaysian restaurants.
8. CIMB, a Malaysian bank, and J Trust, a Japanese finance company, are among potential buyers for Bank Commonwealth, an Indonesian bank, that could value the Indonesian bank at $400-500mm.
9. MAS will reportedly launch a proof of concept for a new payment system called SGQR+, an interoperable QR payments solution.
10. SEA and Grab in Southeast Asia are reportedly facing slowest growth in the region in years with researchers cutting near term ecommerce estimate by 13%.
11. The Southeast Asian digital economy is expected to hit $100bn in annual revenue in 2023.
12. Shinhan EZ General Insurance, a South Korean general insurance company, partnered with PasarPolis to expand in Indonesia.
13. Central banks of Thailand and Hong Kong integrated cross border payments platform.

💰 Financing Announcements

1. Vircle, a Malaysian neobanking financial education startup for children, raised an undisclosed amount.
2. Funding Societies, a Singaporean small business lending startup, raised $7.5mm in debt.

ACQUISITIONS:

1. Kasikornbank, a Thai bank, acquired 97% of Satang, a Thai crypto exchange for $103mm.

🌏 International

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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