Revolut has long had its eye on the India market, where it has sought to carve out a niche in payments before moving into trading, investment and credit. More than three years into the foray, Revolut does not have a lot to show for it, though in April, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) granted the UK fintech in-principle authorization to issue pre-paid instruments (PPI), including prepaid cards and wallets. We understand it took so long in part because of data localization requirements.

Singapore is continuing to take a measured approach to digital assets as seen by the growing prevalence of stablecoin payments in the city-state. In the second quarter, stablecoin payments reached a new high of US$1 billion in Singapore, according to data from blockchain research firm Chainalysis. With the announcement of stablecoin regulations in August 2023, Singapore  bet that these “safer” cryptocurrencies have staying power and will play an increasingly important role in the future of financial services.

UK fintech unicorn Revolut thinks big. Despite not holding a banking license in its home market until very recently, it has sought to depict itself as a global disruptor of the financial services sector. Long before it turned a profit, Revolut had set up offices across the world. Nothing has been able to slow Revolut down significantly, but the speed at which the company moves also has drawbacks. Its compliance regime has been lacking in the past, and it is now facing a growing problem with scams.

2024 might be remembered as a turning point for central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) – the year when interest in them began to significantly wane. In the case of India, while the government seems determined to push forward with the digital rupee, retail users are more circumspect. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) highlights its estimation of 5 million digital rupee users. If we stop to consider that India has more than 1.4 billion people, then less than ½ of 1% of the population is not a particularly strong adoption rate – especially for something that has such strong government backing.

India’s United Payments Interface (UPI) payments rail has achieved massive success in its domestic market that will be difficult for any future competitor to surpass. According to a new report by PwC, total UPI transaction volume is expected to grow form 131 billion in the 2023-24 fiscal year to 439 billion by 2028–29. UPI now accounts for over 80% of India’s overall retail digital payments in India and is expected to surpass 90% by 2028-29. Given UPI's success, India has sought to expand its footprint internationally and in the past few years it has become available in a number of countries from the United Arab Emirates and Bhutan to the UK and France. Yet questions remain about whether UPI can serve as a foundational platform for digital payments outside of India.

South Korea’s No. 2 digital bank K Bank had been planning to go public on the Korea Exchange (KRX) at the end of this year, but has been hesitant to make that commitment given uncertain market conditions. However, K Bank posted such a strong performance in the first half of the year that it may decide the time is right to go public irrespective of market fluctuations. South Korea’s first online lender posted a net profit of 85.4 billion won (US$64 million) in the first half of this year, the highest since its establishment and more than thrice as much as during the same period a year ago.

Kakao Bank has a history of proving wrong skeptics of digital banks. It has been consistently profitable since 2019 and is now set to expand in Southeast Asia. It has managed, for the most part, to stay out of regulatory crosshairs despite disrupting South Korea’s financial services sector. It seemed Kakao Bank’s long string of good fortune might finally have come to an end with the arrest of its parent company’s founder Kim Beom-su on July 23. He has been accused of manipulating stocks during Kakao’s acquisition of the K-Pop agency SM Entertainment last year. Yet thus far, the company’s stock price has been stable, increasing 2% to 21,900 won over the past month, while its second quarter earnings were solid.

Fintech funding in Asia has been tepid due to a confluence of factors, notably high interest rates, uncertainty about the global economy – and especially that of the United States – and general investor disenchantment with growth-first business models. That said, there are signs that the drop-off in funding that began in 2022 may have finally bottomed out. A new report by DealStreetAsia suggests that a modest recovery may be underway in Southeast Asia.

Brazil’s Nubank is continuing to prove the naysayers wrong. In the second quarter, the massive digital lender nearly doubled its net income from a year earlier to US$487 million. Revenue reached a record US$2.8 billion. It now has 104.5 million customers, including about 60% of Brazil’s adult population. The bank is also Latin America’s most valuable publicly-traded financial institution with a market capitalization of nearly $66 billion.

Ant Group and Globe-backed Mynt, which operates the e-wallet GCash, is on a roll. Long one of the most valuable startups in the Philippines, it this month saw its valuation increase to US$5 billion – more than doubling its previous valuation of US$2 billion that it reached in 2021 – following a combined US$800 million capital injection from Japan’s MUFG and the Philippine conglomerate Ayala. The new funding for Mynt comes at a time when large fintech investments are hard to come by given high interest rates and more-stringent investor expectations.