Author: Fintech News Malaysia

Soft Space and its Thai-based partner Digio announced Thursday that they landed a partnership with interbank payment provider, Processing Center Company (PCC), Thailand’s PayNet equivalent. The solution, dubbed “FLite” will be deployed by one of PCC’s shareholder banks and the parties involved said in a statement that it is aimed at encouraging a more pervasive use of cashless payments in Thailand. FLite comprises an NFC based EMV Chip reader that pairs with merchants’ smartphones preloaded with the bank’s secure application. According to them, FLite is a secure, fully-featured and affordable card acceptance channel designed especially for SME merchants and is…

Fi Life announced today that it has added a new 20-year level term life insurance policy to its current suite of life insurance policies. This level term policy is underwritten by Tokio Marine Life Insurance Malaysia Bhd. The company said that the level term policy complements Fi Life’s existing yearly renewable term life policy, which has been offered to Malaysians since 2015. The main difference between a 20-year level term policy and a yearly renewable term policy is that premiums for the level term policy are fixed and guaranteed for the next 20 years. With a yearly renewable policy, premiums…

Funding Societies Malaysia, the largest peer-to-peer (P2P) financing platform in the country and Southeast Asia, has announced its partnership with Carsome, one the region’s largest used car trading platform to offer dealer financing, a financing product offered to local car dealers for the purchase of used motor vehicles. Through this collaboration, 1,600 used car dealers under Carsome could potentially benefit from a total financing amount of USD 200 million. The partnership is in line with both platforms’ mutual aim to empower Malaysia’s small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with short-term financing to help expand their businesses, particularly the underserved local used…

In a bid to capture foreign markets, Malaysian banks are increasingly turning to launching a digital bank as a strategy. Hong Leong Bank announced recently that they have a launch a digital bank that they described as a next-generation, customer-centric digital bank. This news comes after CIMB who has also similarly launched a digital bank in both the Philippines. According to their media statement, the on-boarding process for new customers only takes two steps and can all be completed digitally via its mobile banking platform HLB connect. Once customers are on-boarded customers will receive a Visa virtual pre-paid card with…

iPrice and App Annie recently teamed up to compile data on which is the top e-wallet in Malaysia. Their findings are based on both monthly active users and a combined number of downloads in iOS and Google Playstore. Below are their findings on which is the top e-wallet app in Malaysia. Grab is the Top E-Wallet in Malaysia? Securing their license from Bank Negara Malaysia in December 2018, Grabpay officially began rolling out its wallet in 2019. The study indicates that “Grab is the most actively used e-wallet” however since the data includes users who may be using the…

A group of MyCash Online investors have recently accepted a buyout offer for their shares from VC company 500 Startups. The offer, which gave them 44.2% returns over two years since the ECF deal, was made alongside an investment by 500 Startups into MYCash Online. MyCash Online is a fintech startup that provides an online marketplace for unbanked migrants to purchase products and services online without any bank account or credit card. Through the MyCash Platform, migrant workers can top up their mobile phone, pay utility bills, purchase e-commerce products, bus ticket, air ticket, gift voucher. pitchIN CEO Sam Shafie…

HSBC announced that it has successfully executed a live blockchain Letter-of-Credit (LC) transaction in Malaysia. The transaction involved the import of resin by Malaysia’s Simply Packaging Sdn Bhd (Simply Packaging) from a Singaporean company, both active players in the packaging and chemicals industry respectively. HSBC Malaysia was the issuing bank and HSBC Singapore was the advising/nominated bank. Globally, this is the eleventh blockchain transaction led by HSBC (NYSE: HSBC), and the first pilot blockchain transaction for HSBC Malaysia. Prior to this, a shipment of soybeans was transported from Argentina to Malaysia and the deal was financed using a Letter of…

Touch ‘n Go e-wallet announced today that they have enabled customers of e-hailing app MULA to go cashless through their e-wallet. Ignatius Ong, CEO, TNG Digital Sdn Bhd told Fintech News Malaysia in a media statement that it is vital that they, as a local company, to extend their support to homegrown startups and entrepreneurs. To kickstart this partnership, Touch ‘n Go eWallet and MULA will be rewarding MULA users who pay using the Touch ‘n Go e-wallet RM4.00 off for two rides with the use of the promo code “TNGEWALLET” and an additional RM4.00 off for first time MULA…

Skolafund, a crowdfunding platform for students in need announced that it has been completely acquired by one of Asia’s biggest donation crowdfunding platforms. Skolafund successfully fundraised on the Ata Plus Equity Crowdfunding (ECF) platform in February 2017. The deal reportedly gives investors in the ECF round a return of 10% on their investments. Fintech News Malaysia reached out to both parties to confirm the acquiring party but both Skolafund and Ata Plus declined to comment citing that the party prefers to remain anonymous. According to their press release, to-date, Skolafund has crowdsourced scholarships to the tune of RM1.6 million, benefitting …

Hong Leong Bank unveiled a new, secure and seamless eToken for their Corporate and Small-to-Medium Enterprises (SME) customers. The eToken has authentication technology built-in, with additional biometric facial recoginition technology for mobile devices which meets strict regulatory security requirements. This latest feature uses facial recognition capabilities to authenticate log-ins and approve payments on Hong Leong ConnectFirst (“HL ConnectFirst”), Hong Leong Banks’s business online banking platform. With HL ConnectFirst eToken, Corporates and SMEs are now able to perform banking activities without the need to carry a physical token The eToken will also be integrated with the upcoming HL ConnectFirst mobile banking…

Today, Stripe, a global technology company that builds economic infrastructure for the internet, announced its official launch in Malaysia. It also announced a partnership with Payments Network Malaysia Sdn Bhd (PayNet) to make FPX available to businesses in the country. Valued at US$ 35 Billion, Bloomberg reports that Stripe is the 3rd most valuable company in the United States. Fintech News Malaysia first reported on the beta testing of Stripe as far back as February 2019. With this launch in Malaysia, any online company in the country can now gain access to Stripe’s entire product stack, to launch, run and…

Following the success of its earlier launch of their online medical card AXA eMedic in April 2018, AXA Affin today unveiled their AXA eMedic Family plan. Similar to their earlier digital product, the AXA eMedic family plan can be purchased digitally within 10 minutes and is priced affordably with prices as low as RM 150 per month for a family of four with coverage up to RM 100,000. Our vision is to be the preferred health and protection insurer in Malaysia especially for millennials. With the advancement of new technology, parents do not have to go through the hassle of…

The Employees Provident Fund (EPF) today launched its latest offering, i-Invest. It is a self-service online platform that is accessible within the Members section of i-Akaun and enables eligible members to directly invest a portion of their Account 1 savings into unit trust funds offered by EPF-approved Fund Management Institutions (FMIs). In his speech EPF Chairman Tan Sri Samsudin Osman said, “This new era with its push for constant innovation has given the EPF the opportunity to disrupt the financial industry and transform our ways in order to give better value to our members. “The i-Invest not only enables eligible…

United Overseas Bank (Malaysia) Bhd (UOB Malaysia) today announced the 16 businesses selected to participate in The FinLab’s Jom Transform Programme. The businesses selected to participate in the Jom Transform Programme are from a wide range of sectors including food manufacturing and distribution, food and beverage, healthcare, business consulting, automotive, logistics, and manufacturing. Each expressed a willingness to explore new ways of doing business and to adopt technology for increased productivity. By implementing digital solutions, they hope to improve their workflow processes, to drive sales and customer loyalty and to create greater brand awareness. The small-and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) also…

BigPay, Air Asia Group’s fintech focused company announced today the launch of their international remittance service, which enables users to send money directly from Malaysia to bank accounts in Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines, with no hidden fees and extra charges, they claim. This is the first wave of BigPay’s international remittance rollout, with additional corridors to be announced in the near future. Commenting on the launch Chris Davison, CEO and Co-Founder, BigPay said, “We’re focused on democratising financial services in ASEAN, so it’s an exciting moment for us to be able to offer Malaysians a cheaper and better…

Digital payments are becoming the payment method of choice in Malaysia, with 70 percent of consumers preferring to visit merchants that accept digital payments compared to those that only accept cash, according to the Visa Consumer Payment Attitudes Study 2018. This is an increase of 21 percent compared to the previous year. The sample size of this study is relatively small, with only 500 Malaysians between the age of 18-60 surveyed, so it may or may not represent an entirely accurate picture of Malaysian’s attitude towards digital payments. Over half of the respondents expect their use of digital payments to…

Building upon the success of Trust Score, CoinGecko today announced Trust Score 2.0, which will bring about a more robust exchange ranking system. This was launched, following several high-profile cryptocurrency exchange closures and hacks during the first half of 2019, leading to losses of over $270 million. This update will go beyond liquidity measurements and will introduce four new major measurements, namely, exchanges’ API technical competency, scale of operations, estimated cryptocurrency reserves, and regulatory compliance. Earlier in May 2019, CoinGecko launched Trust Score to provide additional insights into exchanges’ liquidity through orderbook and web traffic analysis. This was necessary to…

As blockchain and distributed ledger technology (DLT) move from their open source and peer-to-peer beginnings and enter the mainstream, companies are rushing to file patent applications. In this area, China-based companies largely dominate their international counterparts and have so far filed the most patents related to blockchain. According to IPR Daily, a Chinese intellectual property news site, China represented 67% of the world’s global blockchain patent applications in the first half of 2019. Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba is the company that filed the most blockchain patents, topping the list with 322 blockchain patents, followed by PingAn with 274 patents, and…

kiplePark, a wholly-owned brand of Green Packet Berhad, announced the launch of their license plate recognition (LPR) technology which they to be the first in Malaysia. The kiplePark LPR is a system where users only need to register their car license plate number using the kiplePark app. Upon entering the car park, the users will receive a notification and e-Ticket on kiplePark app and while exiting, the kiplePark LPR system will automatically scan the car license plate number and payment will be automatically deducted from the users’ e-wallet. kiplePark shared that over the past few years its AI enabled system…

XOX Mobile an MNVO operator is the latest in the long line of companies joining the e-wallet game in Malaysia. XOX Mobile’s CEO, Ng Kok Heng told local media that they are eyeing to capture 10% of the market within the first year of launching their e-wallet. The group will reportedly allocate RM 33 million to expand its e-wallet function by developing a new app to support micropayments, issuance of Mastercards and peer-to-peer transfers. The telco seems confident that it will be able to build upon its existing ecosystem to compete in Malaysia’s extremely crowded e-wallet market. Despite the group’s…