Asia Banking Research

The new US President Donald Trump has made clear his intention to roll back, and possibly repeal, the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010. This will have wide-reaching repercussions for Asia.

As part of our China Fintech initiative, we brought a group of Chinese executives to Singapore for the Fintech Festival and a number of company visits. The 17 fintech executives from some of China's largest P2P lenders, consumer finance groups and digital payments platforms were part of the group. 

The Singapore Fintech Festival concluded on Friday November 18th, much like it started, with a bang. At the beginning of the week it was the Monetary Authority of Singapore laying out its vision for the future of fintech, while the closing party consisted of drums, music and a celebratory finish to a hectic week of innovation center visits, conferences, meetings, openings, drinks, awards ceremonies, more drinks and a general celebration of Fintech in Singapore.  

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Although it was only a week ago, Sibos 2016 already seems like a distant memory with most of the world (with the exception of the Chinese who are still in the midst of the October holiday) back to work. Hosted in Geneva, the conference didn't disappoint. The week was packed with meetings, panels, discussions, and presentations.

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Sibos is in full-swing here in Geneva with a record number of delegates and exhibitors on Day One already. Kapronasia is delighted to be part of Sibos 2016 and will be participating in three sessions of the next couple of days. Please join us at one of our sessions to hear our insights on the latest Asia Financial Industry trends and how we can help your business succeed in Asia. 

Here are the highlights:

On Tuesday September 27th at 11am Zennon Kapron will be moderating the Payments Market Infrastructure Roundtable. The session is a closed door event with regulators and central banks across the region to discuss the latest trends and challenges in payment infrastructure in Asia. 

On Thursday the 29th of September from 12:45-13:45 in the Innotribe space, Zennon Kapron will be guest speaking on Fintech Hubs and more specifically the developments around China Fintech. 

Later that same afternoon on Thursday the 29th from 14:00-15:00 in Conference Room 3 (CR3), Zennon will join an expert panel to speak on the topic of Emerging Markets: Mobile money and financial inclusion.

We have already met many of you at the event, but there are three days left, and we have a few open time slots if you are interested in learning more about how Kapronasia's products and services may help you, please reach out: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Xiaomi has entered the finance industry, following in the steps of Chinese tech titans Alibaba and Tencent. On June 13th, Xiaomi, whose traditional strength is in the smartphone business, joined hands with Chinese conglomerates New Hope Group and Chengdu Hongqi Chain Co. to establish the New Hope Bank in the Western Chinese province of Sichuan.

On November 18th, Baidu announced that it was finalising its private bank plans and would be setting up a banking venture with China Citic bank called Baixin. This was the last of the 3 BAT (Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent) to setup a private bank and was widely expected, although potentially a bit later than originally thought.

Two days after the global transaction service provider SWIFT reported that in August the yuan overtook the Japanese yen to be the world's fourth-largest payment currency, accounting for 2.79% of the global market, yesterday the PBOC launched the Cross-Border Interbank Payment System (CIPS) in Shanghai.

Earlier this week, Alibaba announced it would be investing an additional estimated USD680 million in Paytm, India’s largest mobile payment platform and part of One97 Communications. The investment ups Alibaba's overall ownership to around 40% and shows the e-commerce giant's ambitions to further help develop the mobile commerce and payment industry in India. The money will primarily be used to strengthen the technological platform, customer acquisition and entry into new categories.

If you've ever been to China, you know how atrocious the mobile phone service can be. Previously, you could use any of a number of carriers...as long as it was China Mobile. You could move your number to a different carrier...as long as you had a different number. Users really had no choice as the market was controlled by the government and the 3 main state-owned carriers. Xiaomi is one of eight firms that will be trying to change this.

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