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China Tightens Regulation Over Mobile Payment Apps — What’s Next For Tencent and Ant Financial?
Now that digital wallets like Ant Financial’s Alipay and Tencent’s Ten Pay have become near ubiquitous in the country, where the market for mobile payment reached $5.5 trillion as people use them to pay for clothes, groceries, taxi fares and utility bills, the government wants to bring oversight up to speed by regulating them exactly like banks, said Oliver Rui, a professor of finance at the China Europe International Business School in Shanghai (CEIBS).
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- Finance, Technology
- Region
- Asia Pacific
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Kenyan operators prepare for mobile money interoperability tests
Kenya's telecommunication firms are expected to begin trialling mobile money transfers from one network to the other from January, reports Business Daily.
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- Finance
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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- digital payments, fintech
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Can the rise of cryptocurrency impact currency market in India?
Slowly, cryptocurrencies are coming under the regulatory net in order to check misuse. Japan recently became the first country to regulate cryptocurrencies; the US is quickly laying down regulatory guidelines, the UK and Australia continue to work on the formalities while China has recently banned Initial Coin Offerings (ICO) due to various reasons, including various ICO scams around the world.
Though India plays a relatively small role in the global cryptocurrency market, only about 2% of the global cryptocurrency market cap, the RBI has warned about the potential financial, legal, customer protection and security-related risks in cryptocurrency, amidst prevalent media rumours of RBI launching its own form of cryptocurrencynamed Lakshmi.- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- South Asia
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- cryptocurrency, fintech, regulations
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Alibaba’s payments affiliate apologises for opting in users for credit scoring system
The incident comes as Chinese users grow increasingly concerned about user privacy and how China’s tech giants are handling personal information. In China, laws require companies to store users’ data on servers in the country, and Chinese tech companies reportedly pass on data when the Chinese government makes a request.
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- Finance, Technology
- Region
- Asia Pacific
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- credit scoring, data, fintech
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The countdown begins: Top fintech trends that India can expect in 2018
The year has pretty much offered what everyone expected. It has cemented the significance of the fintech sector in India. From increased momentum behind digital payments to product innovation in digital loan disbursement platforms, the entire sector is leaving no stone unturned to ensure that the nation functions the way it does and achieves the two-digit growth rate that it has persistently been longing for.
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- Finance
- Region
- South Asia
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Kenya’s fintech companies are innovating to bring small businesses into their fold
Mobile operators and electronic payment firms are focusing on the hundreds of thousands of small businesses in Kenya by introducing new products specifically aimed at paying for low-value card transactions with ease, speed, and convenience.
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- Finance
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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- digital payments, fintech
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What was the Most Influential NextBillion Post of 2017? Vote for Your Favorite
“Fast away the old year passes.” That lyric from “Deck the Halls” always hits home this time of year – and in 2017, it resonates particularly strongly. Across the social sectors, the year often felt like a race against time (or against competing societal forces) and many of our most popular posts reflect that sense of urgency. Here are the most influential posts from the last twelve months, one from each month, in our sixth annual holiday contest. Vote early, vote often.
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Beyond ‘Send Money Home’: The Complex Gender Dynamics Behind Mobile Money Usage
In Kenya, gender doesn’t factor as strongly in accessing mobile money accounts as it does for formal sector accounts. This is surprising because in Africa women are less digitally connected than men. However, the networked nature of mobile money explains why more women adopt the technology. Susan Johnson writes that financial inclusion analysis and policy must factor in how women use their money, how it connects them to family and how financial services can facilitate this.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
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