Week 4: a brief look back at some of the fintech news that’s not always picked up.
Winner of the Best Fintech Startup Category
The winner of the Best Fintech Startup category at The ASEAN Rice Bowl Startup Awards (Rice Bowl) is YouTrip.
The company also walked off with the winner of the Startup of the year award.
YouTrip is Singapore's first multi-currency mobile wallet with a prepaid Mastercard that lets the user pay with no fees in over 150 currencies at wholesale exchange rates. The mobile application also allows for the exchange and storage of ten selected currencies in advance through the in-app exchange feature.
"This year, we work together with various partners to ensure the program is a success. We collaborate with more than 50 ecosystem players, community leaders and supporters across South East Asia countries. Some play the roles as Ambassador to promote the spirit of Rice Bowl, some step up and hosted the event in their home country or lead the way as Rice Bowl Country Partners," said Chairman of the ASEAN Rice Bowl Startup Awards and CEO of New Entrepreneurs Foundation, Hamdi Mokhtar.
Mobile money market worth $12bn by 2024
Over in Chicago, we heard that the mobile money market will be worth $12bn by 2024, up from $3.4bn last year.
The estimate is in a new report entitled "Mobile Money Market by Transaction mode, Nature of Payment, Application, Type of Payments, Region - Global Forecast to 2024,” published by MarketsandMarkets.
And by transaction mode, it includes Point of Sale, Mobile Apps, QR codes, Internet Payments, SMS, STK/USSD Payments, Direct Carrier Billing and Mobile Banking.
The report went on to say that major factors expected to drive the growth of the Mobile Money Market, including the rise in the number of mobile subscribers, government initiatives to promote cashless economies, and growth of businesses with digital payment-based business models.
It also highlighted that the mobile apps segment will grow at the highest rate during the forecast period.
As for where this growth is expected, the Middle East and Africa account for the largest market size during the forecast period.
The MEA market is termed as a transforming market. It is expected to have the largest market size in 2018, with Africa showing the highest adoption of mobile money services and mobile subscriptions in the region are growing rapidly.
The growth of the Mobile Money Market in the MEA is further driven by increased investments in payment technologies made by governments of countries, such as Qatar, South Africa and the UAE. This region, said the report, has a presence of creditable Mobile Network Operators (MNOs), banks, and payment processing agents, which encourage the use of mobile money services.
Key and emerging market players in Mobile Money Market include Vodafone (UK), Google (US), Orange (France), FIS (US), Paypal (US), Mastercard (US), Fiserve (US), Airtel (India), Gemalto (Netherlands), Alipay (China), MTN (South Africa), PAYTM (India) Samsung (South Korea), VISA (US), Tencent (China), Global Payments (US), Square (US), Amazon (US), Apple (US), Western Union Holdings (US), Comviva (India), and T- Mobile (US).