Key Announcements From Day 1 Of Singapore FinTech Festival 2024
With Day 1 of the Singapore FinTech Festival (SGFF) 2024 now wrapped up, we summarise some of the key announcements made concerning Cambodia and the broader ASEAN region.
Fortune Announces Inaugural Fintech Innovators Asia 2024 List
A morning session on the festival stage focused on announcing Fortune’s inaugural Fintech Innovators Asia list, which includes 60 leading FinTech companies across five segments:
- Blockchain and crypto
- Digital banking
- Payments
- Wealthtech
- Insurtech
The list, ranked in each category, features innovations from China and South Korea to India and Singapore. Some names on the list are well-known in finance, such as Ant Group, Tencent and Binance.
Others on the list may not be household names globally, but have come to dominate regional markets and transform everyday commerce in the process. Such companies include the Indonesia-based Dana, which has racked up over 180 million users, primarily in Indonesia, and GCash by Mynt in the Philippines, which has found a niche catering to women and the country’s enormous overseas diaspora.
Digital banks, meanwhile, have gone from being small-time disruptors to powerful forces in finance – as reflected by China’s WeBank and Korea’s KakaoBank, which have respectively notched around 400 million and 23 million customers in their respective markets. These companies have changed the conception of what a bank is, as have players like Singapore’s Grab, which began as a ride-hailing service but quickly grew into a financial super-app with forays into payments and banking.
Global Finance & Technology Network’s Board Of Directors And International Advisory Board
The Global Finance & Technology Network (GFTN) – established by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) on October 30, 2024, and announced to be replacing the authority’s not-for-profit organisation called Elevandi – officially unveiled its Board of Directors and International Advisory Board on the first day of SGFF 2024.
The Board of Directors will be responsible for governance and oversight of GFTN whose mission is to harness technology and foster innovation through global partnerships for more efficient, resilient, and inclusive financial ecosystems.
Ravi Menon, Ambassador (Climate Action), Singapore, and former Managing Director of the MAS, is the Chair of the GFTN Board of Directors, and is accompanied by two Deputy Chairs. GTFN’s Board of Directors will be guided by an International Advisory Board, comprising distinguished public and private sector leaders with a demonstrated commitment to the public interest.
The GFTN will have four key strategic businesses – forums, advisory, platforms and capital. GFTN will focus on developing a globally distributed, partnership-driven network of FinTech forms, sharpening the focus of Elevandi’s five existing forums – the Japan Fintech Festival in Tokyo, Point Zero Forum in Zurich, Inclusive Fintech Forum in Kigali, the 3i Africa Summit and SGFF.
Additionally, Menon shared that the GFTN will be expanding into new geographies to double its global footprint over the next five years. The firm will integrate these various forums into a single network, building momentum through the year to culminate in the SGFF.
See the full Board of Directors announcement: Global Finance & Technology Network (GFTN) Announces Board Of Directors And International Advisory Board.
Mastercard’s ‘Pay Local’ To Link Its Cards to 4 Major Asian e-Wallets
Payment giant, Mastercard, unveiled ‘Pay Local’, a new service that allows travellers to use their existing credit or debit cards within popular Asian digital wallets, on November 5, a day prior to the start of the SGFF.
Pay Local allows users to link their Mastercard credit or debit cards to local digital wallets, facilitating easy and seamless payments at over 35 million participating merchants across the Asia Pacific. Pay Local will be integrated by prominent digital wallets in the region, including Bakong in Cambodia, DANA in Indonesia, Touch ‘n Go in Malaysia, and LankaPay in Sri Lanka.
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Release Of ‘FinTech in ASEAN 2024: A Decade Of Innovation’ Report
The roundup edition of the ‘FinTech in ASEAN 2024: A Decade of Innovation’, was jointly launched by UOB, PwC Singapore and the Singapore FinTech Association (SFA), recapping the evolution of FinTech in the region from 2015 to 2024.
According to the report, funding for FinTech in the ASEAN region has surged more than 10 times since 2015, growing at an exponential rate compared to global FinTech funding. This fuelled growth in sectors such as payments and alternative lending, and is poised to advance further with the increasing prevalence of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) and quantum computing.
ASEAN FinTech funding totalled USD 1.41 billion in the first three quarters of this year, constituting four per cent of global FinTech funding, a one percentage point growth year-on-year (yoy). Though the region's total funding was down by less than one per cent yoy, it was a significant recovery from the 71 per cent fall seen in the first three quarters of 2023 against the first three quarters of 2022.
Furthermore, the latest report shows that regional FinTechs garnered more than USD 20 billion in investments over the last decade, with close to 1,500 deals. FinTechs in payment and alternative lending sectors were the most sought, making up more than half of ASEAN's total funding at USD 6.5 billion and USD 4.1 billion respectively.
Read the full report here: FinTech in ASEAN 2024: A Decade of Innovation.
Stay tuned for more of B2B Cambodia’s coverage of the Singapore FinTech Festival 2024.