Future of FinTech | Edition #50 – Dec 2022

Fintech news from the last two weeks of December 2022

Jan 3, 2023

🎉 Happy new year, FinTech friends! 🎉

A new year means different things to everyone, but for us, it means that we're back with your weekly programming of FinTech happenings across themes that are the future of FinTech.

Speaking of the future🔮, it is something that is dynamic and ever-evolving. We witnessed a similar change over the past year as the industry went through its own set of ups and downs and pivots. FinTech infrastructure ⚙️, i.e. the market segment of back-end technology providers offering solutions for financial operations, integrations, and interoperability, solidified as a layer of FinTech that can take the industry from 1 to 1000 and beyond.

The segment includes back and middle office providers such as core banking, banking-as-a-service, fraud and risk management, financial data integrations, payment processing, accounting, and many more niches, which we hope to discover more closely 🔍 as we begin our weekly news roundups.

What happens to the existing set of six themes that we have, you ask? Well, they largely remain the same, except for Platform Finance, which we'll now cover contextually in the segments of Digital and Embedded Finance.

Let's get back to business, shall we? 🪄

Legacy infrastructure in banking has long been the elephant in the room, preventing financial institutions from personalising their services at scale. In 2022, we witnessed a massive influx of banks and FinTechs embracing cloud-native architectures by forging strategic alliances with modern core banking providers. Discover how industry players are paving the way for the "Cloud-native Cores and Digital Banking Revolution" through strategic collaborations.

Edition #50 brings new year wishes packed with fun toppings of FinTech news from around the globe.

Here's the TL;DR

FinTech Galaxy ended the year on a sweet note as it acquired the Egyptian open banking platform Underlie to boost its operations in the MENA region.
Akulaku bagged a whopping $200M in investment from MUFG with plans underway to expand in Southeast Asia.
On the regulatory front, Bank of Israel announced the successful facilitation of about a million transactions by account-to-account routing requests with the implementation of bank-to-bank transition reform under FISL.
Rolling the launch wheels, Wise rolled out ‘Interest,’ a product in Wise Assets which invests in short-term assets issued and backed by the government and is available on GBP, USD and EUR balances. Further in product launches, Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank launched ADIB PAY, a tokenised contactless payment method in partnership with Tappy Technologies and Visa.
In the Philippines, we saw UNO Digital Bank teaming up with Trusting Social to offer more lending services to a broader set of customers. In Thailand, Coinweb joined BMW to introduce blockchain technology to BMW's workflow. E-money licenced Advcash partnered with Mercuryo to integrate its banking-as-a-service platform for Advcash users.
Lastly, the DeFi world witnessed another downfall with Midas Investment which ceased operations as its DeFi portfolio lost 20% of its $250M AUM.

For the longer read, let's get going –

The Open Finance segment was filled with exciting activities in the second half of December:

Starting with partnership, UBX partnered with Mercantile Insurance to provide mercantile customers payment and collection solutions for their insurance needs.
Japan-based Smartpay debuted its open banking use case for streamlining online instalment purchases for customers. The service is offered through a partner network of 67 banks in the country.

The Digital Finance segment danced to the tunes of celebratory collaboration as it made its way through the year-end.

DBS Bank India partnered with Gofrugal Technologies to help SMEs adopt Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) to help them accelerate their digital commerce footprint.
In the Middle East, Tabadul and Al Rajhi Bank teamed up to launch an end-to-end digital electronic bank guarantee, 'Wthaq', that offers premium banking solutions in Saudi Arabia.
Forming a tri-party partnership, First Abu Dhabi Bank, Magnati and PayRow Net collaborated to develop a new digital payment platform for users to make payments for government services using various digital methods, including PoS transactions, card payments, and digital wallets.

The Embedded Finance space witnessed quite the buzz with happenings across the various segments of partnerships, launches and expansion to new geographies:

MoneyGram partnered with Cellpay to expand bill payment capabilities across the US. Customers can access more bill payment options through retail and digital channels expanding Moneygram’s footprint to over 30,000 billers.
Shinhan Bank rolled out its banking-as-a-service product in line with the CEO’s vision to become a provider of invisible finance and launch the BaaS division as part of its efforts to integrate its digital banking services directly into the products of other non-bank businesses.
Sezzle expanded its credit-building product 'Sezzle Up' to the Canadian market. The service enables shoppers to build their Equifax credit profile and view their spending limit.

The FinTech Infrastructure world was simmering with delightful headlines covering active partnerships –

FinWise Bank selected Finastra's Fusion Phoenix core banking solution to modernise its banking infrastructure. The bank, known for its partnerships with FinTechs, is looking to leverage its new core capabilities to better align its retail and business lending technology with its innovative FinTech lending program.
Jordan Kuwait Bank selected Codebase Technologies to power its digital onboarding and instant credit card issuance services.

The Green Finance world made promises of a greener world as initiatives by companies paved the way –

Clarity AI teamed up with Klarna to adopt its AI data and capabilities to promote environmentally conscious electronics brands to its customer base of 150 million shoppers.
Climate Impact X partnered with Carbonplace for a series of proof-of-concept transactions that will enhance connectivity between buyers and sellers required to support carbon market liquidity and scale.
Insurtech Previsico partnered with geospatial data provider Geosite to provide US insurers with live actionable flood alerts to predict and prevent critical impacts.

On the launching pad, Santander Bank rolled out 28 self-serve bank card recycling machines to let all consumers recycle expired or unused bank cards.

The DeFi universe observed new partnership-related headlines floating around in cyberspace.

OKX, a cryptocurrency exchange, joined hands with Hashflow to allow clients to trade tokens on Ethereum, Polygon, BNB Chain, Arbitrum, Avalanche, and Optimism.
Archblock and Adapt3r collaborated to bring DeFi to US-regulated community banks. The collaboration aims to increase access to on-chain credit products while lowering the cost of capital for traditional financial institutions.
Defrost Finance, a decentralised leveraged trading platform on Avalanche blockchain, suffered a flash loan attack across both of its versions – v1 and v2 – causing a loss of $12M.

Some other happenings in the FinTech universe 🪐

Here are a few more FinTech top-ups to keep your cravings satisfied –

Saudi-based debt crowdfunding platform Manafa Capital raised $28M in Series A funding to fuel its growth in SME financing.
Viva Republica, the parent company of South Korean super-app Toss, bagged a whopping $405M in Series G funding and achieved a $7B valuation.
Plooto secured $20M Series B funding to fuel cloud-based payment automation for SMEs in the Canadian markets.

And that's a wrap 👋

We hope you enjoyed this edition of the Weekly FinTech Brew!

If you're hungry for more FinTech insights, check out some of our other work at WhiteSight.

Our latest publications include diving into Asset Tokenisation: The Next Frontier for Partnerships in Banking and exploring the Cloud-native Cores and Digital Banking Revolution.

If you're someone who likes to read think pieces, you will likely love our monthly blog, Fintersections, where our team members analyse the convergence of FinTech with the world.

FinTech research is in the WhiteSight DNA, so if you'd like to get in touch for features, sponsorships, and content marketing services, reach out to us at hello@whitesight.net.

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