Philippines

Philippine neobank Tonik secures $100M in consumer deposits

Tonik, the Philippines' first digital-only neobank, has surpassed PHP5 billion ($100 million) in consumer deposits, just eight months after its launch of commercial operations.…

Philippines: Southeast Asia’s next big breakout market?

TechNode Global’s series on the Philippines will delve into why now, after years of depending on income from remittances, Filipino entrepreneurs and founders are attracting…

For Kickstart Ventures, investment strategies revolve around the digital ‘new consumer’ [Q&A with Minette Navarrete]

The pandemic situation has become a catalyst for accelerating digital transformation across industries. This is not only from the perspective of businesses but also users, as…

Philippines to stop accepting digital bank applications for 3 years, caps licenses to 7

The Philippine central bank will close the application window for digital banking licenses for three years and limit the number of digital banks to seven in the meantime,…

TransCelestial

Wireless tech startup Transcelestial to enter Philippines’ internet infrastructure market with $2M investment from Kickstart Ventures

Transcelestial Technologies, a Singapore-based wireless fiber optic tech company, announced that it has received an investment of $2 million from Philippines corporate venture…

Investree logo crowdfunding platform for startups and SMEs

Investree gets Philippines SEC approval to operate local crowdfunding platform for startups and SMEs

Investree has received approval from the Philippines' Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to operate a crowdfunding platform for local startups and SMEs. According to a…

Philippine digital payment startup SquidPay raises $4.16M in Series A round funding and credit line

Another digital payment system is set to conquer the Philippine market and expand to the rest of the ASEAN region with the rise of SquidPay Tecnology, Inc., an emerging Filipino…

Ant Financial, Ant Group, Jack Ma, Alibaba

Jack Ma’s fintech giant Ant: a brief history of its Southeast Asia empire building

Now we know that Ant Financial—or Ant Group, as we apparently must call it from now on—is ready for dual IPOs pretty soon, it’s a good time to remember that the Alibaba spinoff…

China’s iQiyi ramps up Southeast Asia expansion

After its very quiet rollout in Malaysia midway through 2019, followed by Indonesia a little while later, some might have forgotten that Chinese streamer iQiyi has ambitions to…

GoBear adds $17m to pot to grow its financial marketplace app

Financial marketplace app GoBear—no relation to Gojek, which uses the “Go-” prefix for its services—has secured $17 million from returning investors, bringing its…