Fintech, Finance, Technology, Banking Highlights – 14 February 2018
Asia-Pacific fintech market to reach US$72 billion by 2020, finds Frost & Sullivan
Active support and initiatives by financial regulators such as the Monetary Authority of Singapore, Bank Negara Malaysia and Bank Indonesia has enabled the Asia-Pacific Fintech ecosystem to grow significantly in 2017.
New innovations are expected to radically transform the way consumers shop, pay perform banking transactions and purchase insurance. The wave of new Fintech technologies is also changing customer behaviour and interactions today.
Frost & Sullivan presented its annual Fintech Outlook at The Swissôtel The Stamford in Singapore on 8 February. The event was attended by over 70 senior management and C-suite executives, marking the start of an exciting year ahead for the industry.
The Fintech industry in the Asia-Pacific region is expected to grow at a CAGR of 72.5% from 2015 to 2020, reaching US$72 billion. The positive outlook is fuelled by growth in digital payments such as increasing adoption of cashless payments by small and medium sized enterprises. There is also more widespread awareness of the viability of using P2P financing as well as new methods of crowdfunding using Blockchain, which will lead to growth in the personal and business financing segment.
Blanc Labs partners with R3
R3 and Blanc Labs are partnering to bring innovative FinTech solutions to life using blockchain technology.
R3’s Corda platform is a leading blockchain platform for businesses and Blanc Labs’ team of experts will work with each client to help build smart strategies around effective use-cases and implementation. Be it for treasury reconciliation or lower-cost transactions, blockchain technology helps achieve new levels of back-office efficiency within financial institutions. Loans and mortgages can be put on autopilot using smart contracts. Complex processes such as international letters of credit for small and medium trading firms can be de-layered and disintermediated. Payments systems can be transformed and enhanced.
“Partnering with R3 is a significant step for Blanc Labs in providing enterprise-grade blockchain solutions and digitizing Customer Journeys,” said Hamid Akbari, CEO, Blanc Labs. “There is a growing interest and a real demand from our clients to help understand the implications of blockchain, and we’re committed to helping bring this emerging technology from proof-of-concept to commercial implementation.”
SafeCharge raises investment in Nayax
SafeCharge, a payments technology company, announces that it has invested further in Nayax Ltd (‘Nayax’), a leading global cashless payment solutions provider for the unattended machine industry. SafeCharge made its initial investment in Nayax in December 2016 and today’s follow-on investment takes the total investment by SafeCharge to approximately US$24.5 million in order to support Nayax’s strong growth and international expansion in cashless payment solutions.
The investment in Nayax is a cornerstone of SafeCharge’s omni-channel strategy. SafeCharge, which is one of the leaders in online payments, has a strategy to expand within the offline market by focusing on the high growth “cashless” sub-segment and cashless payments for the unattended machine industry in which Nayax specialises. SafeCharge’s investment will support Nayax’s growth and will strengthen the operational collaboration between the two companies, with expected processing of more than Euros 500 million of Nayax transactions through the SafeCharge Acquiring platform over the next 4 years.
