FinTech

Weixin Pay, the mobile payment function of Tencent's popular social platform Weixin, has increased access for Weixin Pay travellers exploring Singapore to the nation’s unique hawker culture, offering them the ease of payment to nearly 10,000 hawker stalls across the country.

WeLab, a Hong Kong-based fintech platform, announced Monday the completion of the acquisition of an Indonesian commercial bank, PT Bank Jasa Jakarta (BJJ), together with PT Astra International Tbk (Astra), one of Indonesia's largest public companies.

Singapore and Indonesia-based digital financial services group Fazz (previously known as Fazz Financial Group), announced Wednesday a $100 million Series C funding round. This consists of $75 million in equity, which includes investment from existing investors such as Tiger Global, DST Investment, B Capital, Insignia Ventures Partners and ACE & Company.

Singapore digital bank Trust announced Tuesday that its community of customers has reached 100,000 following its launch on 1 September.

M-DAQ Global, a Singapore-headquartered fintech company, announced Monday that it has expanded its global footprint with the opening of its Japanese office through its wholly-owned Japanese subsidiary, M-DAQ Japan K.K.

Fitch Ratings said Wednesday that it believes that many new digital banks in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region will find it more challenging to achieve financial viability as interest rates increase, economic growth slows, and funding conditions tighten.

Akulaku, an Indonesia-based banking and digital finance platform, announced Tuesday the Akulaku PayLater partnership with Chinese cross-border digital payments firm Alipay+, which will allow Indonesian consumers to use its buy now, pay later (BNPL) solution Akulaku PayLater at Alipay+’s global merchants.

Embedded finance is making the financial services industry more vibrant and competitive. But that also means that without a banking-as-a-service adoption strategy, conventional banking and financial services institutions can lag behind the competition in the blink of an eye

Indonesia-based credit tech startup SkorLife announced Monday that it has raised a $2.2 million pre-seed funding round from a group of high-profile investors. AC Ventures participated in the round, along with Saison Capital and an all-star list of angel investors in Asia.

Indonesia e-commerce firm Bukalapak and global bank Standard Chartered have officially launched BukaTabungan, a digital banking service that leverages the reach of Bukalapak’s all-commerce platform and the technology of nexus, a banking-as-a-service (BaaS) solution powered by Standard Chartered.