Author: Fintech News Malaysia

Axiata Group has closed its financial year ended 31 December 2021 with strong operating performance as Axiata Digital’s revenue almost doubled to RM980 million mainly driven by growth at Boost and ADA. Boost is Axiata’s fintech arm and ADA is a digital analytics and artificial intelligence company that designs and executes integrated digital, analytics, and marketing solutions. In FY21, Boost’s gross transaction value (GTV) grew by 25.7% to RM 5 billion driven by growth in online and offline payments, with the latter picking up after easing of lockdowns. Its revenue soared by 65.4% following the acquisition of close to a…

Payments Network Malaysia (PayNet) has launched the Fintech ePayment Accelerator Programme which aims to support and advance startups focused on that segment. The three-months programme focuses on ideas and solutions that can help accelerate the adoption of digital payments in the country especially by onboarding the unbanked and underbanked population. Additionally, the programme also aims to improve PayNet’s existing retail products with enhancements that are more appealing and effective for the users. PayNet’s programme is also on the lookout for new business solutions as existing retail payment use cases may not be sufficient to meet the customers’ evolving needs as…

Kenanga Investment Bank announced that it has launched its AI-driven robo-advisor that aims to simplify how Malaysians save and invest. The Kenanga Digital Investing (KDI) is licensed by the Securities Commission Malaysia and offers two products – KDI Save and KDI Invest. KDI Save allows users to earn daily returns on their savings with no lock-in period and zero management fees. From now till end of the year, KDI Save offers a market leading 3.0% fixed interest rate. Meanwhile, KDI Invest allows customers to grow their wealth with access to global investment opportunities through US-listed Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) at…

Al Rajhi Bank Malaysia announced that it has appointed Ikram Khaliq as Head of Digital Bank and has set up a new office to support its growth plans. This new workspace located in Menara Hap Seng 3, Kuala Lumpur will house its digital bank team on top of several other divisions. The new hire Ikram has over 16 years of international experience mentoring and building tech firms in the fintech and insurtech industries. Specialising in fintech consultancy, he successfully implemented innovative solutions across banking, wealth and asset management, insurance, and financial services. Ikram holds a Degree in Financial Mathematics from…

SecIron announced a strategic alliance with Cybersecurity Malaysia (CSM) to boost awareness about the importance of securing mobile applications and IoT systems among businesses in Malaysia. The pandemic has especially resulted in most businesses going online which puts end users’ data and information at risk if the company has fragile cybersecurity measures. CSM witnessed a total of 7,765 cybersecurity incidents that was reported in the first eight months of 2020. To that end, SecIron’s formation of a strategic alliance with CSM is aimed to enhance close collaboration on the latest trends of mobile and IoT cybersecurity threats and the latest…

Wahed Invest was charged on Thursday by The Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) in the US for making misleading statements, breaching its fiduciary duty, and for compliance failures related to its Shariah advisory business. According to the SEC’s order, from September 2018 through July 2019, Wahed Invest advertised the existence of its own proprietary funds when no such funds existed, and also promised investors that it would periodically rebalance their advisory accounts, but did not do so. The SEC’s order further finds that when Wahed Invest ultimately launched a proprietary ETF in July 2019, it used its clients’ advisory assets to…

Payments platform Fave announced that it has appointed Arvindd Selvaratnam as its Regional Chief Product Officer. Arvindd will be overseeing the company’s regional product roadmap and strategic planning, and will be leveraging various emerging opportunities for Fave in their next phase of growth. As CPO, Arvindd will be leading product design and development efforts to further accelerate Fave’s direction in the BNPL sector. Arvindd brings with him a range of experiences from digital telco, product development and digital payment verticals from previous stints in Malaysia and Cambodia. Previously holding the position of product lead at TNG Digital, he simultaneously managed…

RHB Banking Group had recently concluded its RHB ‘Get Your Hack On’: Data Edition 2022 hackathon which focused on driving customer-centric solutions leveraging on data analytics. This follows the success of the inaugural RHB ‘Get Your Hack On’ virtual hackathon that was held last year. Dubbed as Datathon, the virtual event attracted more than 270 data scientists, analysts and tech talents specialising in digital data to further accelerate the innovation of RHB’s products and services. The Datathon circled around five specially designed problem statements that challenged participants in leveraging on data sets to develop novel and innovative solutions to create…

Malaysian fintech company IIMMPACT announced that it has rasied US$2 million in seed funding from Sequoia India’s Surge, a rapid scale-up programme for startups in Southeast Asia and India. IIMMPACT is Surge’s first startup founded and based in Malaysia and was a part of its sixth cohort of 20 companies. The firm provides a turnkey solution for businesses who want to offer payment services to their customers. Through its API solution, businesses can rapidly launch a digital marketplace to make payments to over 170 billers. By tapping on IIMMPACT’s APIs, companies can add new products within days. The solution also…

Indian payment gateway provider Razorpay announced its first international expansion into Southeast Asia with the acquisition of a majority stake in Curlec, a Malaysian payments firm. Though the amount was not disclosed, Harshil Mathur, CEO and Co-Founder, Razorpay said that the valuation of Curlec was roughly around US$ 20 million. Razorpay said that it is confident that this acquisition will further unveil new channels for global business expansion for online businesses based in India and Malaysia. Curlec currently works with hundreds of businesses across Malaysia with notable names including insurance company AXA, Southeast Asian SME digital financing platform Funding Societies,…

Axiata’s fintech arm Boost is offering micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) financing up to RM100,000  financed through its digital lending subsidiary Boost Credit that was formerly known as Aspirasi. ‘Capital Plus’ is a Shariah-compliant micro-financing facility based on commodity murabahah that is ideal for MSMEs. It offers financing from RM1,000 up to RM100,000 over a 15-month tenure at a low profit rate of 1.2% per month, with no repayment of principal for the first three months. Boost said that the application process will not take more than 10 minutes and the funds will be disbursed within 48 hours for…

Payments platform Fave announced that it has appointed Gary Yeoh as its Country Manager in Malaysia to oversee the day-to-day business operations. Gary has a broad spectrum of experience across various industries. He was a pioneer of the Berjaya Loyalty program (Bcard), leading the business development for over 6 years and as a result, the programme grew to a base of 4.5 million card holders with over 100 merchants, which won numerous awards. He moved from loyalty to payments in 2017 and was part of the founding team at Boost, Axiata Digital’s fintech arm, where the e-wallet grew to a…

Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) and Bank Indonesia (BI) has launched a cross-border QR payment linkage to enable instant, secure, and efficient cross-border payments between the two countries. Through this linkage, consumers in both countries will be able to make retail payments by scanning the DuitNow or QRIS (Quick Response Code Indonesian Standard) QR codes displayed by offline and online merchants. The pilot phase has kicked off today and a full commercial launch is expected in the third quarter of 2022. This linkage will be expanded in the future to support cross-border remittance where users in both countries can make real-time…

Axiata Digital’s fintech arm Boost has its sights expanding its suite of services and deepening its regional presence following a year of growth in revenues and product innovation. Boost reported that its user base grew to over 9.6 million and had nearly doubled its merchant base to over 438,000 touchpoints by end of 2021. For its next steps, Boost will be prioritising the expansion of its Buy-Now-Pay-Later (BNPL) products in 2022 by leveraging its large active consumer base, expansive merchant network, settlement and payment infrastructure, as well as digital underwriting and collection capabilities. The company will also be expanding its…

The banking industry is in the midst of a period of intense transformation in Southeast Asia, and indeed the world, driven in part by the pandemic, but also influenced heavily by changing consumer demand and fast-moving technological innovation. Predicting the future of banking, while never an easy task, is now more uncertain than ever, with new trends emerging regularly and regulatory changes occurring at pace. To get a clearer understanding of how Southeast Asian banks view the future of core banking within their organisations, IDC Financial Insights interviewed a number of Southeast Asian banking executives, discussing their thoughts on legacy…

The Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC) has partnered with the ASEAN Fintech Group (AFG) with aims to enhance initiatives aimed at scaling up Malaysian fintech companies. Their collaborative efforts will focus on three key areas, namely deal flows, fintech ecosystem support and joint amplification. MDEC will curate deal flows and funnel potential Malaysian fintech companies to AFG. Meanwhile, AFG will explore funding facilitation opportunities for Malaysian tech companies with a focus on fintech firms through its regional network for potential investment and acquisition. AFG operates across four verticals, payments, BNPL, insurtech and digital wealth management. Among the Malaysian fintech companies…

Al Rajhi Bank Malaysia has selected Thought Machine, a cloud native core banking technology firm, to power their upcoming “next-generation digital bank”. The bank had embarked on a multi-year digital transformation in 2021 and will deploy Thought Machine’s core banking engine, Vault, to launch a new digital bank in 2022. Al Rajhi will harness Vault’s Universal Product Engine to design, launch and manage a full suite of products on a single, clear architecture. Al Rajhi is building a full suite of Shariah-compliant products and Vault’s product building capabilities will be instrumental in allowing the bank to build and offer services…

SME digital financing platform Funding Societies Malaysia, announced that it has disbursed RM1 billion in financing to micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) across more than 17,000 financing deals. This milestone comes as the platform enters its fifth year of operations in the country. Funding Societies said that the platform was in a better position to react and to adjust its business model and risk underwriting by learning from the challenges and uncertainties it faced in the past two years. This had resulted in the firm witnessing 100% growth of financing deals in 2021 compared to the previous year, while maintaining…

HSBC Malaysia has launched a multi-currency digital wallet that enables small-and-medium enterprises (SMEs) to make and receive international payments from one single global account. The HSBC Global Wallet is fully integrated within the bank’s existing business banking platform, HSBCnet, and taps into the bank’s global payments network. The bank said that the global wallet significantly reduces the time in which money can be delivered to a overseas beneficiary and removes the need for businesses to use third-party providers for international transactions. SMEs can send and receive money in 10 currencies including the US Dollar, Japanese Yen, renminbi, Singapore Dollar and…

Versa Asia, a Malaysian digital cash management platform, announced that it has achieved over RM 100 million in transactions. The firm has also witnessed the creation of over 30,000 accounts on its platform in less than a year after the official launch. In recent years, digital cash management platforms have become a more popular investment method as these platforms invest in secure mutual funds with high liquidity. Launched in partnership with Affin Hwang Asset Management, Versa is a money market fund investment, a type of mutual fund intended to offer high liquidity with low level of risk. With entry fees…