Sample of our Inhouse Industry Insights

In the latest Finstep Tipping Point Thought Leadership Series, Finstep Asia Founder, Musheer Ahmed is in conversation with Simon JD Schillebeeck, the Founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Handprint, about how FinTechs can increasingly contribute to make a positive impact on climate change. They discus how Handprint can provide a platform for companies to take responsibility and offset their carbon footprint

In the latest Finstep Tipping Point Thought Leadership Series, Finstep Asia Founder, Musheer Ahmed is in conversation with Sean Lee, the CEO of Algorand Foundation, about the role of FinTech in climate improvement and carbon offsetting. They discuss about the role of blockchain in environmental sustainability as well as the evolution of Green DeFi (Decentralised Finance). Sean takes a deeper dive into what makes Algorand one of the greenest blockchain protocols, while highlighting some exciting projects on Algorand.

“Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks”. The headline from The London Times in UK encoded in the first bitcoin blockchain transaction on January 03, 2009. The origination of Bitcoin and the development of technology underlining it, the Bitcoin Blockchain, was said to be due to the disenchantment and loss of trust of the founders and its early adopters with the incumbent financial services industry and the havoc the 2008 Global Financial Crisis had caused.

India is the fastest-growing internet market in the world, with an internet user penetration reaching over 700 million users in 2020. Accelerated by COVID-19, the number of monthly active users is likely to reach 639 million users by the end of 2020, with a near equal distribution of rural users vs. urban users. With this increase in internet users, coupled with a similar increase in mobile ownership, there has been a natural increase in users' payment apps and e-commerce.

When one looks at the evolution of Fintech, financial inclusion was a major theme in the early part of the last decade. Fintech was meant to help serve the unserved/underserved and examples like MPesa showcased the potential of how Fintech can influence the lives of millions of people. As Fintech has developed and with much wider adoption across segments, we have seen the focus shift to the mainstream with solutions ranging from payments to wealth management.