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.
Asia-Pacific
- CIMB Niaga and Liquid Group forge strategic partnership to drive cross-border QR payments between Singapore and Indonesia.
- Active.Ai, developers of a conversational AI platform for financial services companies, raises $3 million in Series A funding.
- Dianrong, a Chinese P2P lender, completes its latest funding round. The amount raised was not disclosed.
Sub-Saharan Africa
- Nigerian lender Kudimoney rebrands as Kuda; picks up banking license from the country’s central bank.
- Virgin Money South Africa to launch zero monthly fee bank account and low-cost cross border payments via its app.
- Sixteen companies, fully one-third, in the Inclusive Fintech 50 of early-stage startups working on solutions to advance financial inclusion, hail from sub-Saharan Africa.
Central and Eastern Europe
- CallVU teams up with Banca Transilvania to boost mobile banking.
- Romanian consumer app Beez picks up more than $284,000 (€250,000) in new funding.
- Russia’s Sberbank acquires stake in Islamic charity platform, PayZakat.
Middle East and Northern Africa
- Egyptian fintech startup Paynas wins Visa’s FinTech pitch-off competition at the Seamless North Africa 2019 conference, taking home a prize of $50,000.
- Libya’s Yaqeen Bank partners with Oracle FSS to deploy its core platform and digital banking experience.
- What is the future of the bank branch in MENA? Khaleej Times takes a look.
Central and Southern Asia
- National Bank of Pakistan partners with financial systems supplier Autosoft Dynamics to automate the branch’s operations in Bahrain.
- India’s central bank to revisit regulations on the storage of payments data.
- Could the success of Kenya’s M-Pesa show the way to higher fintech adoption in India?
Latin America and the Caribbean
- Brazil launches regulatory sandbox for fintech and blockchain-related projects.
- Colombian consumers are adopting fintech solutions at a faster rate than consumers in any other Latin American country according to the latest survey from EY Global.
- Celcoin, a Brazilizian fintech that enables users to their smartphone into a hub for reselling mobile phone recharges, earns a spot in the Inclusive 50 list.