Fintech

Finance 6 min Klarna Applies to Become a US Bank — Not Act Like One — With a Utah Charter Bid Klarna filed on 6 July for a Utah industrial bank charter to bring its US banking in-house and reduce its reli... SA Sarah Chen 11 Jul ASEAN Tech 6 min MAS's SAFR Framework Puts the Safeguard Where the Money Moves — At the Point an AI Agent Acts Singapore's MAS and industry partners published SAFR on 3 July, a voluntary framework that governs AI agents i... PR Priya Nair 11 Jul ASEAN Tech 6 min MAS Is Building an Institute to End the Pilot Era — Singapore's Bet That the Hard Part of Fintech Is Deployment MAS announced on 25 June it will establish a Future of Finance Institute to move AI and tokenisation from expe... SA Sarah Chen 11 Jul ASEAN Tech 7 min Igloo Buys Eazy Digital in Its Second Thailand Move in a Year — a Bet on Insurtech Consolidation Singapore insurtech Igloo has acquired Eazy Digital, a Singapore-headquartered insurtech with operations acros... SA Sarah Chen 9 Jul ASEAN Tech 6 min MAS Opens an AI-Themed 2026 Global FinTech Hackcelerator and SFF Excellence Awards On 29 June 2026, the Monetary Authority of Singapore opened applications for the 2026 Global FinTech Hackceler... SA Sarah Chen 2 Jul ASEAN Tech 7 min Vietnam Calls for a Connected ASEAN Fintech Ecosystem at the AFF 2026 — but the Standards Are the Hard Part At an ASEAN Future Forum 2026 seminar in Hanoi, Vietnam's Deputy PM Nguyen Van Thang urged the region to conne... SA Sarah Chen 11 Jun Finance 6 min Stablecoins Are Becoming Settlement Plumbing — and Singapore's Rulebook Is About to Matter Early-June moves by Mastercard and Visa show stablecoins shifting from speculative asset to back-end settlemen... DA Daniel Koh 8 Jun Finance 5 min SoFi Coach Shows Where Fintech AI Is Really Heading SoFi Coach brings AI financial guidance directly into a consumer fintech app. The bigger signal is not chat it... DA Daniel Koh 6 Jun ASEAN Tech 5 min Mastercard Switches On AI-Agent Payments in Singapore and Malaysia Mastercard has taken agentic commerce live in its first two ASEAN markets, letting verified AI agents pay on a... DA Daniel Koh 6 Jun ASEAN Tech 3 min Sea's three engines fire at once: Shopee, Monee and Garena drive a 47 per cent revenue jump Singapore's Sea Limited posted first-quarter revenue of US$7.1 billion, up 47 per cent, as its e-commerce, fin... SA Sarah Chen 1 Jun Finance 4 min Nubank Posts $5 Billion Quarterly Revenue and 135 Million Customers as NuFormer AI Goes Live in Credit Decisioning Nu Holdings crossed $5 billion in quarterly revenue for the first time in Q1 2026, reported 135 million custom... DA Daniel Koh 1 Jun ASEAN Tech 8 min MAS Issues Binding GenAI Banking Guidelines — Five-Bank Sandbox, Cross-Border Implications for ASEAN Finance The Monetary Authority of Singapore published its long-awaited binding guidelines on generative AI use by bank... SA Sarah Chen 20 May Finance 4 min Western Union Picks Fireblocks for USDPT — Stablecoin Settlement Hits Remittance Rails First in Philippines and Bolivia On 4 May 2026 Western Union announced Fireblocks will power USDPT, the company's first U.S. dollar-backed stab... FI Finance Desk 18 May Finance 3 min Malaysia Fintech 2030 Launches Talent-Pipeline MoU at Money20/20 Asia in Bangkok The Fintech Association of Malaysia signed a memorandum with Manaf Gardner Associates at Money20/20 Asia on 2... FI Finance Desk 18 May AI & ML 9 min Anthropic Takes On Wall Street: Claude's 10 Financial AI Agents Signal the End of Manual Banking Workflows Anthropic unveiled 10 pre-built financial AI agent templates alongside Claude Opus 4.7, scoring industry-leadi... AI AI Tools Desk 8 May Finance 9 min PayPal's AI Reckoning: New CEO Cuts 4,760 Jobs and Bets $1.5 Billion on Machine-Led Transformation PayPal announced 4,760 job cuts (20% of workforce) as new CEO Enrique Lores restructures the company into thre... FI Finance Desk 8 May ASEAN Tech 8 min ASEAN+3 Finance Ministers Chart Unified Cross-Border Payment Future as Tokenisation Emerges as Next Frontier The 29th ASEAN+3 Finance Ministers' Meeting endorsed connected cross-border payment architecture and tokenisat... JE Jeffrey Tan 8 May Finance 10 min Coinbase Joins PayPal in AI-Driven Job Cuts: Is the Great Fintech Workforce Reset Just Beginning? Coinbase (14% cuts) and PayPal (20% cuts) announced AI-driven workforce reductions on the same day, capping a... FI Finance Desk 8 May Finance 7 min The $860 Billion Agentic Commerce Opportunity: How AI Is Rewiring Global Payments From the Inside Out PayPal's $860B TAM estimate for its three new business units frames the scale of the agentic commerce opportun... FI Finance Desk 7 May ASEAN Tech 5 min Singapore Launches Southeast Asia's First National AI Safety Framework Singapore's IMDA has unveiled a comprehensive national AI safety framework, the first in Southeast Asia. JE Jeffrey Tan 7 May ASEAN Tech 5 min Indonesia's Digital Economy Hits $90 Billion — And SMEs Are Finally Getting Their Share Indonesia's digital economy reached $90 billion in 2025 and is accelerating in 2026, with SME fintech access e... RE RECATOOLS Editorial 6 May Finance 5 min Bitcoin Breaks $80,000 at Consensus 2026 as ETF Inflows Hit $1.97 Billion in April Bitcoin broke $80,000 on May 4 as Consensus 2026 opened in Miami. April ETF inflows hit $1.97B — the strongest... RE RECATOOLS Editorial 5 May Finance 5 min Visa Launches "Agentic Ready" Programme in Singapore as Stablecoin Settlements Hit $7 Billion Annually Visa has launched its Agentic Ready programme with 13 Singapore issuers to prepare banks for AI-agent payments... RE RECATOOLS Editorial 2 May Finance 5 min Robinhood Gets MAS Approval for Singapore — What It Means for Retail Investors Robinhood received in-principle approval from MAS to launch brokerage services in Singapore. Here is what this... RE RECATOOLS Editorial 2 May