Can Hong Kong compete with Singapore as fintech hub?
Singapore is widely held to be Asia’s premier fintech hub, but experts in Hong Kong are confident that the city can catch up. In a recent study by Deloitte, London and Singapore were found to perform highest as fintech hubs, followed by New York and Silicon Valley. Hong Kong was found to be the sixth most competitive jurisdiction for producing fintech companies and solutions. At GTR’s Asia Trade & Supply Chain Finance Conference 2017 in Hong Kong today, however, fintech dominated the conversation, as a whole roster of banks, companies and individuals queued up to sing the Special Administrative Region of China’s virtues as a centre for development. “I think […]
Blockchain startup Factom raises $8 million in extended Series A
Blockchain startup Factom has finished raising just over $8m as part of an extended Series A round. Last October, the firm said that it had raised $4.2m as part of the funding in an effort to raise capital ahead of planned product launches. Taking part in the round, according to AustinInno, include Harvest Equity and Peeli Ventures, along with several as-yet-unnamed local investors. According to public records from the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Factom raised approximately $8,027,535 during the round. Previously, the firm – which uses its own blockchain network to verify the the integrity of data – had raised $1.1m in a crowdsale conducted in mid-2015, before going […]
P2P platform hits £50m lending milestone
Peer-to-peer (P2P) platform Lending Works has celebrated providing more than £50m worth of loans since its launch in January 2014. The achievement follows a record-breaking first quarter of 2017, with nearly £5m lent via the platform in March alone. Nick Harding, CEO of Lending Works, said: “It’s incredibly rewarding to have come as far as we have since launching just over three years ago. “It is at times like this that I want to thank our extraordinary team for their hard work and determination. “That said, we prefer to look forward rather than back, and with many exciting and ambitious new initiatives in the pipeline, we expect to breach the […]
PayPal and Google get cozy with new digital wallet partnership
PayPal Holdings Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google deepened their relationship with a new agreement that enables payments through the tap of a phone from PayPal accounts at thousands of new retail locations. The partnership lets PayPal users link their accounts to Android Pay, Google’s digital wallet, on smartphones running most versions of the Android operating system. This makes PayPal a funding option when people use Android Pay in locations including Walgreens Boots Alliance drug stores and Dunkin’ Donuts restaurants. PayPal was added as a payment method for Google’s Play app and digital content store almost three years ago. PayPal CEO Dan Schulman has been busy cutting deals with banks, credit […]
Bitcoin payments cheaper & safer than credit cards: Cointed
Cointed is a rather young, but fast-growing Bitcoin exchange located in Kufstein, Austria. The company was founded in November 2015 by Christopher Rieder and Wolfgang Thaler and during the first year attracted more than 4,000 permanent customers. Cointed currently makes it possible to buy and sell a number of cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Ether, Monero, and Zcash and convert them to USD, EUR, and GBP. Expanding to Turkey Cointed is operating more than 17 Bitcoin ATM’s around Austria, France and Italy. BATMTwo and BATMThree machines are supplied by General Bytes, one of the leading Bitcoin and Blockchain technology providers. This year Cointed is planning to expand to Turkey. With the suspension […]
P2P financing kicks off in Malaysia
The peer-to-peer (P2P) lending industry is off to an encouraging start. Funding Societies Malaysia, the first platform to launch, successfully raised RM320,000 for two term loan financing programmes within three weeks in March. The loans will be used to fund the working capital of two companies – an electronics business and an automobile parts distribution business. Meanwhile, the platform aims to provide investors with an effective return of 22% and 24.91% respectively over a year. “Most of the investors are in the 20 to 40 age group. We are quite happy with the fundraising and hope it will help us attract more borrowers and issuers,” says Funding Societies CEO Wong […]
Total Market Cap of Digital Currencies nears $30 Billion
Digital currencies reached a new high today, surpassing $28 billion, a more than doubling from their previous all-time high of around $12 billion back in 2013. Indicating an increasing interest in digital currencies and the wider blockchain space. The main driver is, of course, bitcoin, which is nearing $20 billion once more after rising for much of the week from around $1,000 to approximately $1,200. The currency, however, has lost market share, falling below 70%, as other coins gain attention. At first it was monero after being added to some drug markets, then dash suddenly and puzzlingly incredibly shoot up above $100, but now has nearly halved, standing around $60 […]
British fintech sector has shrugged off Brexit dip, says regulator
Britain’s financial technology sector has recovered from an initial dip after Britain’s vote to leave the European Union, a senior UK regulator said on Monday. Fintech companies have revolutionised the financial sector with the likes of mobile payments services and were quickly targeted by centres such as Berlin and Luxembourg after last June’s Brexit vote, playing on fears that UK businesses could be cut off from the EU single market when Britain leaves in 2019. “In the immediate aftermath of the EU referendum there was a concern that we would see the number of innovative firms wanting to operate in the UK fall,” Chris Woolard, director of strategy and competition […]
