Alibaba financial services subsidiary Ant Financial says it is interested in expanding to Japan; the financial services firm has been expanding in the Eastern World with ventures in Thailand, Indonesia, Australia The Philippines and Korea; it already has plans to double the number of Japanese stores that accept Alipay to more than 45,000 this year; while further details on an expansion timeline have not been released, a spokesperson for the firm has said, "In Japan, there is a strong need of financial services from small and micro enterprises, and Ant is willing to share its standards and experience with local partners." Source
Tradeshift operates a marketplace for businesses, allowing them to manage supply chain buying and selling; through the partnership with CreditEase, the two firms will develop a financing app that will facilitate lending to Chinese businesses on the Tradeshift platform; according to Tradeshift, the new app will provide a peer-to-peer financing option for hundreds of thousands of China-based exporters. Source
Everything We Know About the Bitcoin Scam Rocking Twitter’s Most Prominent Accounts U.S. Fintech Bond Financial Secures $32 Million Through...
China's central bank provided its insight on fintech development initiatives for the country in a recent press conference; the press conference included four of the central bank's government officials including Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of the People's Bank of China; the central bank reported that it encourages and supports fintech development in the country; it spoke about some of its initiatives including a digital currency and other new blockchain solutions; it also noted its work to strengthen regulation specifically in the areas of unlicensed businesses and third-party payment platforms. Source
Central Bank of Bahrain (CBB) has announced the first members of its new regulatory sandbox: NOW Money and Tramonex; H.E. Khalid Al Rumaihi, chief executive of the Economic Development Board of Bahrain (EDB) explains to AltFi, "In addition to the development of the regulatory sandbox, we have a number of further initiatives we expect to be launched in the coming months including a venture capital fund-of-funds."; NOW Money offers users in the Gulf region mobile banking and Tramonex helps companies process and transfer funds online. Source
Omise is planning a funding round through digital cryptocurrency; the blockchain digital payments startup will sell digital ether tokens with a fundraising target of up to $16 million; the fundraising will begin in May and the service plans to launch in the fourth quarter; the digital cryptocurrency fundraising represents a new funding alternative to venture capitalist investing and allows the firm to gain public participation from a broad set of stakeholders without selling equity in the company. Source
Ant Financial Services Group is focused on serving small and micro enterprises as well as consumers. With the vision "to turn trust into wealth," Ant Financial is dedicated to building an open ecosystem of internet thinking and technologies while working with other financial institutions to support the future financial needs of society. Businesses operated by Ant Financial Services Group include: Alipay for payments, Yu'e Bao for money market services, Ant Fortune for wealth management, Ant Check Later and Ant Micro Loans for financing, Zhima Credit (formerly Sesame Credit) for credit reference, Zhao Cai Bao for online lending and MYBank for small business lending. Source
Amartha is an Indonesian fintech startup focused on using the peer-to-peer business model in rural areas of Indonesia; Amartha originally started as a microfinance institution in 2010, but that business model did not work; they moved to a peer-to-peer model where individual Indonesian investors fund the loans; they focus on small rural villages and to assess borrower risk they blend demographic profiling and psychometric tests to determine the probability of repayment; they currently have 5,000 investors and generate returns of about 15% to 17% structured as a profit-sharing scheme. Source
Bitcoin trading has become a viable income source for many Chinese cryptocurrency traders; launched in 2009 the cryptocurrency has recently reached highs of over 8,000 yuan ($1,160.65) and is currently trading at around 6,600 yuan ($957.53); with a global worth of over $14 billion, over 90% is currently in yuan and Chinese investors are actively taking advantage of the currency's gains; investor Huai Yang is reportedly earning 1 million yuan ($145,081) per month from trading bitcoin; other investors have also reported steady bitcoin trading monthly incomes of over 40,000 yuan ($5,803). Source