28 Apr Booming Fintech Ecosystem in APAC
PwC in collaboration with Startupbootcamp Fintech Singapore recently published a report of the booming fintech ecosystem in Asia Pacific. As per the report, with 347 fintech investment deals in last year Asia Pacific is fast catching with regional fintech powerhouses. Startupbootcamp engaged more than 400 FinTech start-ups in 16 locations for the 2016 FinTech Accelerator programme, TechInAsia (formerly TechList) provided funding data, while regulatory insights are provided by PwC, strategic sponsor of Startupbootcamp FinTech. The report provides insights on innovation and start-ups disrupting the market, provides a funding overview and which countries are leading the fintech wave.
From the information gathered from 405 early stage start-ups throughout APAC, 37% of the start-ups are from India. As per the information provided by TechInAsia, start-ups can be segmented into 3 verticals – finance, virtual currency and payments. The funding in payments is growing and around one-fifth start-ups are payments oriented. In APAC, China is by far the biggest fintech ecosystem in deal size number of deals done. China had been part of more than 50% deals of APAC in Finance and the total deal size was USD 3.2 billion in 2015. If all investments and deals across all industries with APAC are considered China leads the list with 1728 deals amounting to USD 26.4 billion, followed by India, Japan and Singapore.
The report provides inputs on the regulatory developments in the leading regulators in APAC –Reserve bank of India (India), FSA (Japan) and MAS (Singapore).Out of the three mentioned regulators, Singapore is regarded as the most stringent and progressive with regards to fintech start-ups for the region and arguably the world. Its central bank and financial regulatory authority, MAS, is committing USD 225 million over five years in fintech projects and MAS also announced its intention to establish Singapore as Smart Financial Centre.
The Fintech APAC landscape differs from the global landscape as the global landscape is directly influencing the financial landscape but the APAC start-ups are either copying the global initiatives or they influence the local established financial companies.
The Asian start-ups are already impacting the major areas of financial services and international fintech companies have started to chip away at traditional banking models. Various Fintech ecosystems in APAC will evolve and grow exponentially. It will not be long before the next disruptive FinTech start-up comes from these shores.