Here’s a look at China’s biggest fintech players

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If you sit down and think about it, the evolution of financial services over the last few years has been incredible. Just five years ago, I’d have to shove a S$5 bill into my pocket so that I could buy a drink on the way home after my evening run, and the walk back after my purchase would be filled with the sound of coins jingling in my shorts. Now, all I need is my smartphone.

Over in China, the last 10 years have been a time of incredible growth for the country’s fintech industry. Everyone wants a slice of the financial services pie, and many of its big tech firms want their slice to be even bigger, foraying beyond the typical bounds of payments into other areas.

Today we look at,

• The leading players in China’s financial services sector
• The fashionable future plans of this Indian business-to-business startup
• Other newsy highlights such as Afterpay’s partnership with Stripe and China’s cross-border plans for its digital yuan

PREMIUM SUMMARY

The who’s who of Chinese fintech

In the last decade, China’s fintech space has seen explosive growth, with companies offering digital payments, microlending services, and everything in between. The sheer scale of the sector is mind-boggling to comprehend – which is why we’ve pulled together a landscape map of all the companies in the space.

• Far and wide: Many of the country’s biggest tech companies – think Ant Group, Tencent, and Baidu – have their fingers in the fintech pie, usually in the payments sector. But they’re moving into other aspects of fintech, such as virtual banking and insurance, which could heat up competition in those sectors too.
• Ebbs and flows: Chinese regulators typically take a wait-and-see approach to encourage innovation, which is why fintech in the country boomed in 2016. However, stricter regulations enacted in recent years have made things challenging for fintech players.
• Winter is here? Funding in the space slowed down after 2019, amid escalating trade tensions with the US and the Covid-19 pandemic. But the sector is still prime for growth.

Read more: The tech heavyweights that have shaped China’s financial industry

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Indian business-to-business startup CouchFashion has raised US$150,000 as part of its seed funding round from We Founder Circle, a global community of founders and strategic angel investors.