A London perspective on 5 fintech startups in Asia

Being based in London, there is always some surprise in the finance community when I start my speech talking about Malaysia.

I guess they expect me to promote the startups in our accelerator—Level 39—the biggest in the European fintech scene. And that’s what I often do, in the last weeks alone in Portugal, Italy, Belgium, and in a couple of weeks in Poland.

But when they ask me to speak about leapfrog innovation in banking—radical changes in a short period of time—Asia is a great place to start.

There are 2.5 billion “unbanked”—adults who don’t use banks to save or borrow money—and the largest part is based in Asia and Africa. There are 800 million adults living on less than US$5 a day. This huge mass of humanity is not served by traditional banking because they are simply too expensive to reach.

This is where a startup can make a difference. To tweak an old quote, “Every time a bank refuses to serve a customer, a startup gets its wings.”

Smartphones are cheaper and more popular than ever, with 1.9 billion users estimated in 2015. An Unbanked with a smartphone is no longer unreachable.

In Asia and Africa, the combination of large masses of new customers and low resources has always been an issue in the past. Today, it inspires startups to develop low cost but effective solutions.

This technology can be later imported in the West. Think about the “prepaid meters”—the prepayment service for the house electricity and gas. They are becoming popular with British Gas, but not many know that they were firstly used in South Africa.

5 fintech startups in Asia

What are the Asian startups more common in my keynote? Many, but some of them are more common than the others. These are some of the companies in my last presentation.

1. Wedlite (Indonesia)

I love to bring up the case of Wedlite every time I can.

What’s the connection with London?