Author: Fintech News Malaysia

Shariah-compliant P2P financing platform microLEAP announced a strategic and multi-faceted partnership with TheLorry, a Malaysian logistics tech platform. This strategic collaboration provides TheLorry with flexible and convenient invoice financing as well as term financing options through microLEAP’s network of local investors seeking Shariah-compliant investment opportunities. The partnership comes at a time when TheLorry is looking to fulfil customer orders on behalf of blue-chip companies and local merchants operating via online platforms and local hypermarkets. The deal has a maximum cap of up to RM 500,000 per investment note over a 3-month period for invoice financing and a 12-month period for…

Malaysian fintech JurisTech announced a partnership with Mambu, a cloud-native core banking platform, with aims to create a seamless customer and user journey in the credit and financing application lifecycle. The connectivity between Mambu and JurisTech’s products allows the latter to offer a holistic credit management platform from digital onboarding, loan origination, debt collection, and artificial intelligence to the digital banking sector. JurisTech is looking to tap into Mambu’s unique ecosystem, extensive industry experience in payments processing, accounting and finance, regulatory reporting, and card issuing and processing. Additionally, JurisTech also aims to leverage Mambu’s global market presence and clientele to…

Razer Merchant Services (RMS), the B2B arm of Razer Fintech, announced the integration of Ant Group’s Alipay+ solutions for more than 60,000 online and offline merchant touchpoints across Malaysia to expand its merchant offerings. Introduced in 2020, the Alipay+ solutions are designed to make it easy for businesses, especially small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to accept different payment methods and conduct cost-effective digital marketing campaigns. These merchants can now process cross-border payments made by a wider range of global e-wallets and mobile bank apps. E-wallets supported by Alipay+ include Touch ‘n Go eWallet in Malaysia, Kakao Pay (Republic of Korea),…

Syariah-compliant payment gateway PayHalal is now offering merchants participation in its inaugural iBNPL facility jointly offered with buy now, pay later (BNPL) platform Atome. This Islamic BNPL programme offered by PayHalal and Atome seeks to provide merchants with sustainable income by generating traffic into their webstore and storefronts. Merchants who sign up with PayHalal can now benefit from the free, 0% interest Riba programme as well as thousands of Atome’s pre-approved consumers with a maximum RM 5,000 spending limit. Registration can be completed online in 30 minutes with immediate approval or with PayHalal’s on-ground roving team, which will be mobilised…

Touch ‘n Go (TNG) Group today announced the launch of GOpinjam, an inclusive digital personal loan that was developed in partnership with CIMB Bank. GOpinjam is available effective immediately to Touch ‘n Go eWallet users who are Malaysian citizens above 21 years old. TNG offers personal loans from as low as RM100 to a maximum of RM10,000 and potential applicants will need a minimum monthly income of RM800. According to TNG, the repayment period for these loans can range from one week to one year, with no hidden fees of early settlement charges. The credit underwriting process is built using…

Airwallex, a cross border payments company, announced the launch of its cross-border payment services in Malaysia today. The company had managed to secure a money services business license from Bank Negara Malaysia in August last year. Initially, qualified Malaysian businesses will be given access to Airwallex’s fast, transparent and cost-effective foreign exchange conversions and payouts in more than 130 countries, enabling them to grow and operate globally. Airwallex said that it will continuously extend the availability of its product offerings to more businesses over the next few months. This announcement marks Airwallex’s ongoing plans for a Southeast Asia expansion. Earlier…

Luno, a regulated digital asset exchange in Malaysia, shared that its female users have grown from 16,000 in 2020 to more than 120,000 in 2021, an increase of more than sevenfold. In addition, the transaction volume of female users has increased twelve times year-on-year (YoY) from RM170 million to over RM2 billion, indicating a positive trend of digital asset investment among women in Malaysia. The data is based on Luno’s female Malaysian user activity in 2021. On Luno, most female users in Malaysia buy cryptocurrencies for investment while the rest are for trading, sending and receiving, and payment. Most of…

The Digital Penang Fintech Hackathon, a collaborative initiative of Digital Penang with its partners Finexus and Touch ‘n Go Digital, has announced the winners for 2021. The winning team is 404 Not Found for its charity cloud e-wallet, which turns savings’ interest into donations, taking home RM20,000 API credits and RM10,000 cash. The second and third place winners are MinersTech with its crowdfunding app, and Canada Hippo with its one-stop subscription management app. A total of RM54,000 in API credits and cash was awarded to the top three teams of the hackathon who were judged based on innovation, business viability…

Malaysian equity crowdfunding platform (ECF) pitchIN announced that it has received in-principle approval for Secondary Market from the Securities Commission Malaysia (SC). The company is targeting to launch the pitchIN Secondary Market in the first half of 2022. Just yesterday the SC had also announced that pitchIN was one of the two registered Initial Exchange Offering (IEO) operators. Chan Wei Chi, who will head pitchIN’s IEO operations, said that pitchIN aims to contribute to the creation of a vibrant digital assets ecosystem in Malaysia that is open, innovative and interoperable. pitchIN added that it has been preparing for some time…

AmBank announced that it has has partnered with Bay Supply Chain Technology, a member of the CapBay group of companies and a fintech company offering a digital Supply Chain Finance (SCF) platform. The partnership aims to enable integrated digitalisation in SCF that will positively impact the supply chain management process. With SCF going digital, AmBank can now expand its market to include micro, small and medium sized enterprises along the supply chains to improve their trade activities and cash flow. This also eliminates the cumbersome physical submission of financing requests and supporting documentations. The SCF platform consolidates data produced by…

The Securities Commission Malaysia (SC) today announced that it has registered two Initial Exchange Offering (IEO) operators, Kapital DX Sdn Bhd and Pitch Platforms Sdn Bhd, to promote responsible innovation in the digital assets space. The registered IEO operators will provide an alternative avenue for eligible companies to raise funds via the issuance of digital tokens in Malaysia. An issuer may raise funds up to RM100 million from retail, sophisticated, as well as angel investors, subject to the investment limits provided in the SC’s Guidelines on Digital Assets. These new operators will be required to carry out the necessary assessments,…

The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in financial services is all over the news, with some reports estimating it to be a US$450 billion opportunity. But what’s the real story around what AI can do? Beyond just automating certain processes, AI has the potential to improve accuracy in credit or risk decisioning workflows, encouraging financial inclusion and allowing the underbanked and unbanked access to financial services in ways that were previously unreachable. Over 3 billion people in Asia have no access to formal credit and three of the top ten ‘most unbanked’ countries in the world happen to be located in APAC (Vietnam,…

Grab Financial Group (GFG) Malaysia and SEDANIA As Salam Capital Sdn Bhd (SASC) are partnering to offer Grab Cash Financing-i, a shariah-compliant financing product, to eligible Grab drivers and delivery partners. Grab Cash Financing-i aims to provide its gig workers with convenient and secure access to financing. This financing option lowers the barriers to micro-financing which is typically inaccessible to those below a certain income level and lack a formal credit history. This solution is made possible through SASC’s GoHalal Financing Programme (GHP), which ensures the financing activities and operations are compliant with Shariah principles and practices. The GoHalal Financing…

Tune Protect Malaysia is now the first insurer in the country to have received approval from Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) to host its insurance core system on Telekom Malaysia’s (TM) Cloud α Edge. This was made possible via a collaboration between Tune Protect, TM and Huawei Malaysia. This partnership will enable Tune Protect to re-platform its existing GIS (General Insurance System), an insurance core system, on to cloud. This collaboration between the three parties aims to provide Tune Protect’s customers with consistent speeds in user portal experience; more tailored insurance offerings for their requirements; and better insurance premium rates due…

Luno, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Digital Currency Group (DCG), announces the launch of Luno Expeditions, a global, early-stage investment arm for fintech, crypto and web3 startups. The investment arm will now spearhead all of DCG’s early stage investing. The team will scale up investments targeting up to 200-300 per year globally and expand the focus beyond crypto into the broader fintech space. In a statement to Fintech News Malaysia, its CEO, Jocelyn Cheng said that Luno Expeditions is keen to support founders building the next generation of Malaysian fintech and crypto companies. She adds that they are aiming to invest…

Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) has announced the appointment of Suhaimi Ali as Assistant Governor effective 1 April 2022 onwards. Suhaimi joined BNM in 1998 after graduating from the University of Notre Dame, United States of America. Throughout his career with BNM, he has served in various areas which include financial sector development, regulation and supervision, strategic planning, market conduct, international negotiations and IT services, as well as in the Governor’s Office. The appointment comes on the heels of Assistant Governor Norzila Abdul Aziz’s retirement on 1 April 2022. Since joining the Bank in 1988, Norzila has played an instrumental role…

Maybank has launched its new Maybank Personal Digital Financing which provides instantaneous approval and subsequently disbursement within 10 seconds. Leveraging the bank’s comprehensive credit risk metrics and modelling capabilities, the new solution has a decisioning engine that can perform pre-qualification checks and assess each application in real-time. All existing and new customers between 21 and 60 years old can apply for Maybank Personal Digital Financing. Maybank’s customers can apply for up to RM100,000 or four times their monthly salaries, whichever is lower, with no income documents required. The approval is subject to the customer having a salaried account with the bank,…

The Securities Commission Malaysia (SC) has cautioned the public on the sharp increase of investment scams promoted on messaging application Telegram. Since January 2022, the SC has received a total of 47 complaints and enquiries on illegal investment schemes promoted through Telegram. These fraudulent schemes offer non-existent investment opportunities, promising very attractive and risk-free returns within a short span of time. They commonly offer unrealistic returns of as high as 1,000% within 24 hours or even within a few hours. The perpetrators use various names to carry out the investment scams. They may also impersonate or clone licensed capital market…

Malaysia Aviation Group (MAG), the parent company of Malaysia Airlines, announced a regional partnership with Singaporean Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) platform hoolah to provide a seamless and convenient payment option for travellers. Travellers in Malaysia, Singapore and soon Hong Kong, can now book their getaway with MAG’s main airline, Malaysia Airlines online and pay for their flights via hoolah’s flexible three-month, interest-free payment option. This partnership comes at a time where travel is picking up in Singapore as its borders are already open to 30 countries/regions including Australia, South Korea, and Switzerland under the Vaccinated Travel Lane (VTL) scheme,…

Malaysia’s credit reporting agency CTOS Digital had recently appointed Eric Hamburger as its Deputy Group CEO to bolster its strategic and operational leadership. He will be particularly focused on the emerging areas of data analytics and digital platforms. A 28-year veteran in corporate strategy and international credit reporting sector, Hamburger was previously the President and CEO of Experian Colombia and Mexico where he was instrumental in its transformation into a digital solutions provider. Since his appointment to the newly-created role in September 2021, Hamburger has been heavily involved overseeing CTOS Digital’s acquisition of the fintech specialist JurisTech, which was approved…