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Singapore Cracks Down on Foreign-Only Digital Token Services
On the 6th of June the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) published a terse clarification with outsized impact: from 30 June 2025, any Singapore-incorporated firm that offers digital-token services solely to customers overseas must hold a Digital Token Service Provider (DTSP) licence—or shut down. In the same breath, the regulator warned that such licences will
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Visa Protects Pay-by-Bank Buyers—A Payments Gamechanger?
When Visa formally switched on its Pay-by-Bank rail in the UK on 2 June 2025, the headline feature was not speed—open-banking payments have been real-time for years—nor reach, thanks to Faster Payments. The news was the guarantee: a card-style dispute-resolution rule set that promises to reimburse consumers if a transfer goes wrong. Visa says the
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Australia’s New BNPL Rules Mean Credit Scores Will Never Look the Same
Buy-now-pay-later has been the feel-good payments story of the past decade: interest-free instalments, a tap-and-go checkout, no bank-manager questions. By mid-2024, Australia had approximately 7 million active BNPL accounts with an average transaction value of A$136. Yet the same scale that made Afterpay and Zip household verbs, has also drawn regulator heat. On 10 June
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Scalable Capital’s US$175 Million Raise: Is Europe’s Invest-Tech Winter Over?
On 3 June, the Munich-based digital investment platform Scalable Capital announced its largest financing to date: €155 million ≈ US$175 million, led by Belgian listed investor Sofina and growth-equity shop Noteus Partners, with repeat cheques from Balderton Capital, Tencent and HV Capital. The round lifts Scalable’s cumulative funding to more than US$535 million and comes
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Trust Bank’s Rapid Rise: From Pilot to Powerhouse
Singapore’s cloud-native Trust Bank just filed results that would make even marble-and-mahogany incumbents blush. Revenue for 2024 vaulted from S$39 million to S$97 million – a 148% surge – while operating losses narrowed from S$128 million to S$93 million. The figures come straight from the bank’s FY-2024 statement, which also noted that costs rose only
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ECB Opens Digital Euro Sandbox to 70 Companies
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When the European Central Bank (ECB) first pitched a “digital euro” back in 2020, sceptics complained the project lived inside a lab no merchant or fintech could ever see. That complaint ended on 5 May 2025, when ECB opened a digital-euro innovation platform and quietly emailed access keys to about 70 external organisations – supermarkets,
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Hong Kong Lights Up Stablecoins, Yet Old Rules Dim the Glow
Hong Kong’s shiny new Stablecoin Bill is the best kind of progress: the sort that lets policymakers hold a ribbon-cutting ceremony while telling the rest of the world, “see, we’re open for business.” On May 21st, the Hong Kong LegCo waved the Bill through, giving the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) clear authority to license
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Payment Aggregator Licences Are India’s Next Fight Club
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The Reserve Bank of India’s payment aggregator stamp has quietly become the most coveted badge in Indian fintech. Since January 2025, the central bank has issued just nine final approvals—PayU, BillDesk, Adyen and, in the past week alone, Quicktouch and Getepay—while hundreds of hopefuls remain in limbo. The figure is striking, given that over 185
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Tech Awards Mask the Pain of Cross-Border Payment
When Singapore-based Thunes walked away with The Asian Banker’s “Best Cross-Border Payment Technology Platform” trophy on 22 May 2025, the LinkedIn applause was instant. The post trumpeted a Direct Global Network that now reaches “7 billion mobile wallets in 130 countries” and moves money in “real time and securely.” For a moment it felt as
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RBI Digital Lending Directions 2025: Turning India’s Wild-West Loan Apps into a Regulated Main Street
The Reserve Bank of India has pressed the “consolidate” button. On 8 May 2025 it issued the long-trailed Reserve Bank of India (Digital Lending) Directions 2025, stitching together the 2022 lending guidelines, the 2023 default-loss-guarantee circular and two years of FAQ clarifications into one rulebook. The new master directions arrive with sharper teeth—as every fintech,
