As Finovate goes increasingly global, so does our coverage of financial technology. Finovate Global: Fintech News from Around the World is our weekly look at fintech innovation in developing economies in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and Central and Eastern Europe.
Middle East and Northern Africa
- Fintech digital crowdsourcing platform, Fintech Galaxy, honors leaders of MENA’s fintech industry at its FinX – Excellence in Fintech awards.
- Entrepreneur magazine looks at how recent investment trends are impacting the growth of fintech in the MENA region.
- ADGM announces partnership with Bahrain’s central bank to encourage innovation in financial services in both the UAE and Bahrain.
Central and South Asia
- Bangladeshi sales automation and credit assessment firm ShopUp picks up $1.62 million in seed round led by Omidyar Network.
- Kazakhstan’s Bank CentreCredit buys 111 ATMs with integrated security and monitoring technology from BS/2.
- TechCrunch interviews ZestMoney CEO Lizzie Chapman on the building a fintech startup in India.
Latin America and the Caribbean
- Decision Report features Finn AI in a look at how chatbots are revolutionizing the financial sector. In Portuguese.
- Banco Ficensa of Honduras goes live with new core banking technology from e-IBS.
- Brazil’s Banco Bradesco partners with Japan’s MUFG Bank to develop Ripple-based cross-border payments service.
Asia-Pacific
- Singapore’s Grab raises $50 million in new funding from Thailand-based Kasikornbank; unveils co-branded mobile wallet, GrabPay by KBank.
- Courtesy of a joint venture with China’s LianLian, American Express becomes the first foreign card scheme to gain direct access to China’s payment card market.
- Ondot Systems announces new end-to-end digital card services platform for Asian banks.
Sub-Saharan Africa
- Kenyan fintech startup Pezesha unveils financial education academy to help educate would-be borrowers.
- Rand Merchant Investment Holding (RMI) via AlphaCode, awards R16 million to eight South African fintech startups.
- Nigerian Vice President Yemi Osinbajo urges the nation’s banks to make reforms in order to “cope” with what he called “a quick convergence between technology and financial products.”
Central and Eastern Europe
- Tinkoff Mobile extends service to seven additional areas of Russia including Smolensk and the Republic of Mordovia.
- Czech Republic’s Moneta embraces cloud-based banking with test of automatic application deployment in the AWS environment.
- Russian microfinance company MFC Zaymer joins automated P2P platform, Robo.cash.