Southeast Asia has emerged as a Fintech Hotspot and a recent digital economy report indicates huge growth opportunity for digital financial services in the region.

Recognising this huge potential in the FinTech sector, TRADEPASS is bringing the 6th Edition World Financial Innovation Series to ASEAN on the 7–8 April 2021.

UTP Pro, which is approved by Barclaycard and accredited by both Mastercard International and VISA Europe, officially launches on 1 April and is expected to rollout to thousands of businesses by the end of 2021. This will include businesses across the in-store retail and hospitality sectors that have been particularly hard-hit by pandemic and the lockdowns that have followed.

COVID-19 has been a curate’s egg for financial services. Occasionally buoyant markets and strong results in some sectors, balanced with significant shifts in operating models and sharply accelerated client expectations.

Cornerstone FS plc, the cloud-based provider of international payment, currency risk management and electronic account services to SMEs, announces that admission of its entire issued and to be issued share capital to trading on the AIM market of the London Stock Exchange (“Admission”) will become effective and dealings will commence at 8.00 a.m. today under the ticker “CSFS”. The Company’s ISIN is GB00BNG7CD28 and its SEDOL is BNG7CD2. 

“The FinTech gender gap is most stark at the top – recent studies have demonstrated that woman represent just 14% of FinTech board seats. At Zumo women represent over 40% of our team and the same in our management team. Moreover, reports often place crypto owners as being less than 10% female… For Zumo, this isn’t a future we believe in.” - Dagmara Aldridge, COO – Zumo

The Recovery Loan Scheme, a new scheme to support access to finance for UK businesses as they recover and grow following the pandemic, opens to applications from today. The scheme, announced at the Budget on 3 March 2021, is scheduled to run until 31 December 2021, subject to review.

Ikano Bank has procured fraud prevention technology services from UK based RegTech firm, TruNarrative. The decision is part of Ikano’s digital transformation programme and will see the TruNarrative platform integrated with Ikano’s new technology architecture to facilitate their Europe wide fraud prevention strategy.

As Covid-19 kept consumers around the world at home, nearly everything from groceries to gardening supplies was purchased online. According to Mastercard’s latest Recovery Insights report, this amounted to an additional $900 billion being spent in retail online around the world in 2020. Put another way: in 2020, e-commerce made up roughly £1.50 out of every £5 spent on retail, up from about £1 out of every £5 spent in 2019.¹

State Street Global Markets has released the results of the State Street Investor Confidence Index® (ICI) for March 2021.

The Global Investor Confidence Index increased to 93.9, up 2.0 points from February’s revised reading of 91.9. The increase in Investor Confidence was driven by the European ICI, which rose 12.6 points to 90.7, and the North American ICI, which rose 1.1 points to 94.4. Meanwhile, the Asian ICI dropped 4.9 points to 93.2.