Vietnamese digital banking platform Timo has raised US$20 million in a new financing round led by global investment firm Square Peg.

Jungle Ventures, Granite Oak, and FinAccel, besides existing backers Phoenix Holdings and unnamed angels, also co-invested, the neobank said in a press note.

Timo expects to capitalise on Square Peg’s expertise in fintech to bolster its growth, aiming to “set the benchmark” for modern banking in the country.

Also read: How digital banking is driving financial inclusion in SEA

Founded in 2015, Timo is a 24×7 online bank aiming to bring greater financial inclusion and accessibility to the large majority of the unbanked Vietnamese population. In addition to helping customers save time during onboarding processes, it also provides access to other banking services through its online platform.

Timo has no physical bank branches; instead, it offers customers meeting spots with coffee and seating areas to make their deposits or manage their funds.

As per a statement, Timo is one of the few banks in Vietnam that provide eKYC services. 

In 2019, Timo formed a strategic partnership with Viet Capital Bank to further ramp up operations.

Recently, the company has been moving forward with its social banking concept. Timo’s features, including TimoPay by Link and Smart History, allow receivers to reply to transactions in the same way they would on a social networking site while also integrating various financial needs such as insurance and investing.

As of 2021, Timo claims it processed over two million transactions every month, resulting in an expected gross transaction value at a US$2.5 billion run rate.

According to McKinsey report, in comparison to APAC’s emerging nations and some APAC developed markets, Vietnam recorded an arguably higher increase in active digital bank users. 

In addition, 88 per cent of APAC customers in developing nations use digital banks between 2017 and 2021, with Vietnamese users increasing by 41 per cent to 82 per cent in 2021 alone. 

With over US$1 billion in assets under management, Square Peg has invested in various fintech firms, including Southeast Asian buy-now-pay-later firm Kredivo, robo-advisor startup StashAway, and Indonesia-based wealth tech firm Pluang. 

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This series is produced in collaboration with the Fintech Association of Malaysia (FAOM), a national platform that supports Malaysia become the leading hub for fintech innovation and investment in the region.

An academic working in Indonesia told me that nowadays, the easiest way to win a research grant is to throw in the phrase Industrial Revolution 4.0, with all its accompanying accessories: digitisation, innovation hubs, 5G connectivity, etc.

The COVID-19 pandemic has vastly accelerated the pace of digitisation, bringing millions, whether by entrepreneurship or by pure necessity, into the realm of e-commerce, digital payments, and virtual spaces. It has galvanised talk of fostering innovation and thrust government policy surrounding the digital economy into the spotlight. Every policymaker is eager to crack the code in terms of what can attract founders, and of course, investments, into a nation.

For more than a decade, Dato Ng Wan Peng was a key figure at the Malaysian Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC), driving investments, building local tech champions, and propagating digital inclusivity. She was crucial to the rollout of the Multimedia Super Corridor. She has weathered through sweeping reforms, a historic change in government (twice), and gained a formidable reputation as a highly pragmatic, systems-focused executive. She is perhaps one of the most experienced people in the region regarding growing a digital economy.

Twenty minutes into the interview, when I bring up the impact of the pandemic, she pounces on the topic with frank, sobering precision:

“The digital divide has always been there. It just has been laid bare by the pandemic and it is a wake-up call that a lot more needs to be done. Infrastructure was supposed to be the ‘easy’ part, but there are huge gaps that still exist.”

Also Read: 25 notable startups in Malaysia that have taken off in 2021

Indeed, the pandemic has supercharged digital adoption. Karen Puah, President of the Fintech Association of Malaysia (FAOM) noted that QR code registration has tripled, going from 330,000 to more than one million in one year; while digital payments have grown 44 per cent in the first half of 2021 to MYR4.5 billion (US$1 billion). Yet, it has also highlighted glaring gaps. “What Dato Wan Peng points out is absolutely key. Financial literacy, connectivity, merchant coverage, all these aspects of digital inequality are going to be the make or break as to whether this transformation benefits the larger segment of society.”

Dato Wan Peng wastes no time in pressing the issue:

“Now is the time to make it happen. The crisis has made it such that awareness of the importance of digitalisation is now sky-high. It has become a mainstream political agenda, where internet and e-commerce have become voter issues even during the recent state elections. What we need now is a clear plan. The plan should be out in the open so everyone knows, everyone can participate, everyone can contribute. Communication is key; the policies are usually there but it is sometimes not clear, and people feel changes are arbitrary or sudden.”

Of course, there is the elephant in the room – we can talk a good talk, but at the end of the day, can Malaysia really be a digital innovation hub, for fintech or for the larger tech industry?

“After everything is said and done, it comes down to execution. Look, this is a cliché by now, but Malaysia has a lot of advantages. Our talent is adaptable, trainable, loyal, linguistically accomplished, and culturally-savvy; our jurisdiction is business-friendly, flexible.”

“So local talent is great, but are we retaining them? Are we providing a conducive environment for them to grow? We have a lot of money being poured into the digital economy, but is it being used at the right places, with purpose? We consistently have great blueprints, but how is it being implemented on a day-to-day, person-to-person basis?” Even through the glaring blue light of the computer screen, through the audio encoding of Zoom, one can hear Dato Wan Peng’s real passion (and frustration) for the topic.

Also Read: I want MaGIC to breed entrepreneurs who create solutions for the world: CEO Dzuleira Abu Bakar

But we come back to solutions, not problems. What is the grand panacea to all these issues? What is the glue that could tie in all the building blocks Malaysia (or many other jurisdictions) supposedly already has?

Dato Wan Peng looks at me, and states her case simply as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

“Clarity. From an investor’s perspective, they want clarity. This is not the same as a guarantee of results; all investors understand there is risk involved. But clarity in terms of the plan is essential. Then we need to stick to it. The issue is that policies keep changing direction, chasing the latest fad, and moving on to the next thing without having pursued the previous goal properly. This, of course, feeds into political stability: whether investors can trust the policies you say will be there now, will still exist into the future.”

In this respect, Puah completely agrees. “Political stability is a real issue for investors, it has a direct bearing on the reliability of our policies. If we can get our policies consistent and clear, then we can do a lot better. For a business to truly scale, they need to hit a market with a sizeable middle class.”

Dato Wan Peng continues to expound on what clarity could bring to a country:

“We need that clear goal then we need to break it down to bite-sized tasks we can execute, then push it forwards at every single level –public and private. Many people go on and on about how other places are awash in money. Money is undeniably a factor, but it cannot keep people around forever. There needs to be a value add; as a country, you have to be very clear you are driving this agenda, and it cannot be wishy-washy.”

“One example is global business services (GBS), especially in animation, design, and game studios. Malaysia has done very well in this.  This is because we tackled it from multiple angles with a clear and consistent strategy: having the right educational institutes produce quality talent, having the facilities and infrastructure, and having supportive policies which allowed us to position ourselves well in this burgeoning market.”

Also Read: Expo 2020 Dubai: The Malaysian companies ready to break into the global Islamic fintech market

Turning to specific industries, I ask what could be the next technology that may revolutionise the Malaysian digital economy. Unwavering, Dato Wan Peng puts me down gently: “It’s not what technology that is the question. It is how we are going to utilise that technology that really matters.”

Puah provides a ground-level view of what needs to happen next. “Ultimately, it falls back to how companies are enabled and how they respond. This pandemic, we saw a huge growth in fintech, but really, it was not so much the result of new products, but more of the influx of older generations, SMEs, and migrant workers into these digital systems.”

“Whether or not they continue to stay past the pandemic, whether companies can ride on this momentum to supercharge their growth, it will be back to basics: expanding financial literacy initiatives, improving the user-friendliness of the product, ensuring the customer is taken care of throughout their lifecycle. They need to keep at it.”

At the end of it all, it always comes back to clarity and consistency.

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ASEAN Fintech Group (AFG), a fintech acquisition company in Southeast Asia, has acquired JazzyPay, a digital payments provider in the Philippines, for US$1.8 million.

The acquisition builds on ASEAN Fintech Group’s vision to create a regional omnichannel platform in the fintech space.

With this deal, ASEAN Fintech Group looks to leverage JazzyPay’s existing partnerships with leading national banks, e-wallets and payment processors of the metropolitan city.

JazzyPay’s founders and key management personnel will continue to spearhead its growth with accelerated resources and support at the Group level.

Also Read: Fintech is transforming how Southeast Asian companies process international payments

“We believe working together and being a part of AFG’s fast-growing portfolio of companies will enhance our capabilities across ASEAN, fast-tracking the advancement of Southeast Asia’s fintech ecosystem and digital future,” said Kathleen Acosta-Marindo, Co-Founder and COO of JazzyPay.

JazzyPay is a registered operator of payments system (OPS) regulated by the central bank of the Philippines. The platform enables onboarded businesses to collect online payments through multiple channels across credit and debit cards, online banking, digital wallets, and over-the-counter cash deposits for unbanked customers.

ASEAN Fintech Group was founded in 2017 by Dato Larry Gan, Lau Kin Wai and Douglas Gan. It builds an integrated fintech value chain through innovation, network and scale across four verticals: payments, lending/ BNPL, insurtech and digital wealth management.

The firm has ASEAN financial licenses and quick market access to more than 1,000 companies and millions of consumers in the region.

As per a statement, ASEAN Fintech Group has invested more than US$10 million to date on strategic M&As of burgeoning fintech startups within the region.

“Fintech in Southeast Asia has seen tremendous growth in 2021. We are bullish that this rapid growth will continue into 2022 as we acquire and merge with companies in the ASEAN region, showing solid fundamentals. We also see a more matured fintech regulatory framework, guiding us through the complexities of each market,” said Douglas Gan, Executive Director of ASEAN Fintech Group.

Also Read: Banks and fintech: An arranged marriage built on trust, but does it last long?

AFG has identified and intends to expand into two ASEAN countries in 2022, namely Vietnam and Cambodia. The group will also expand its operational capacities and grow its key verticals of insurtech, payments and lending.

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The global blockchain market is predicted to rise to US$23.3 billion by 2023. Following this growth, mainstream investors are becoming more attracted to venture into the crypto space. To be successful, one would be better off equipped with the right mindsets to win in this booming market. To get started, we’ve shortlisted seven tips that will help you become a more intelligent crypto investor.

Always have a plan

Yes, we know that this might sound cliche, but having a plan is crucial to your investment success. You don’t just go to an exchange and buy on a whim; you need to clarify what exactly you desire to get out of your investment. For example, is it a short-term or a long-term investment? What do you plan on doing with the profits?

By formulating a concrete plan, you can follow a course of action to achieve your ultimate investment goal. It won’t take long to build a plan, but it will have lasting effects that will help you win. Have an end goal in mind, and then work backwards to increase your chances of success.

Timing is key

If you are FOMO-ing in your crypto investment, consider it a sign of caution. FOMO, if you are not aware, means fear of missing out. It is a notorious reason why many investors fail. It can be tempting to jump into a lucrative trend, especially if you see others make massive profits in a short period.

Instead of becoming a victim of FOMO, think about rewiring your brain to do what 90 per cent of investors don’t –wait and be patient to buy when assets are relatively low in price, not when it’s high and overbought. For example, back in 2017, when almost all cryptocurrencies recorded their all-time-high prices, many people bought highly overpriced assets simply due to FOMO. Unfortunately, these investors saw their investments lose over 95 per cent of their value in the year after.

Also Read: NFT adoption is soaring in Southeast Asia. Here’s why 

Buy low and sell high

This may seem like pointing out the obvious, but in reality, many people end up doing the exact opposite! This is one of the most common mistakes that crypto investors make. Having a plan to time your purchases in advance and knowing when to sell is a crucial step. Be patient and buy when it’s priced low relative to the asset’s true fundamental value.

No one has the crystal ball to know when prices will top out. Instead, setting price targets to sell at which you’re comfortable with is a smart move to bolster your investment skills.

Focus on net wins

While winning or earning money is your ultimate goal, you need to accept that you will lose some of it along the way. Some investments will not realise returns as you expect them to be. Remember, the goal is to make net profit.

It’s okay to lose some, as long as you can win more. Net profit is what matters, not the individual wins and losses. Otherwise, you’ll be attached to your losses and will feel unmotivated to continue. Let’s paint an example: if you invest equal amounts into 10 different assets, two might not perform well, three of them might perform moderate, and the remaining five may do exceptionally well. These five assets alone may reward you with substantial results.

Don’t forget to cash out

Unfortunately, many investors become content when their investments are growing. But seeing your portfolio grow along the way is not the final goal of crypto investing. You need to enjoy your hard work. Once the value of your crypto increases to your expected (or unexpected) goal, don’t forget to cash out. The cryptocurrency market is volatile. Your gains today may become your losses tomorrow. So remember to realise your profits in cash or stablecoins.

Also Read: Demystifying NFTs and DeFi

Take time to research

In this digital age where you can access the internet pretty much anywhere you go, there is no excuse not to make informed investments. Smart investors conduct due diligence before buying into any cryptocurrency, whether it’s a popular coin or a new one. This allows you to better understand where and how you’re investing your money. Crypto is one of the fastest evolving industries. Therefore, proactive research is key to thriving.

Diversify your portfolio

Investments are unpredictable. Even those that seem to offer promising returns can crumble down in a flash. As much as you can get thousands of profits in a day or less, the opposite is also true. To futureproof your investments from uncertainties, diversifying your portfolio is a battle-tested strategy that has led many famous investors to success.

With this in mind, many investors opt to keep a large percentage of their total portfolio in major cryptos such as Bitcoin or Ethereum. High-risk assets can make up a smaller portion of your portfolio to balance risk and reward. Therefore, even if your high-risk assets don’t perform well, you still have a majority of your portfolio that is relatively stable.

It all starts with the right mindset

By employing these mindsets when investing in cryptocurrency, you can avoid common pitfalls that many investors experience time and time again. At the same time, it will allow you to become an intelligent investor by empowering yourself with a solid footing to win in the ever-evolving crypto space.

No content herein is financial advice.

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The content was first published by The Human & Machine.

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Digitisation has progressed and grown from Web1, the first worldwide web built on open source technologies and open standards such as HTML/HTTP. These protocols served as the foundation for technological giants such as Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple. Then came the Web2 shift; the technology was primarily focused on user-generated content; the most significant innovation brought about by this progression are social networks such as Facebook/Meta, Twitter, and many more.

Notably, the majority of Web2 technologies were based on the same open and standard Web1 technology. The internet on which the web is built was the result of work from the 1960s to 1990s from research labs and universities largely in the public sector. As not-for-profit, they focused on establishing open standards for ease of information sharing. The only difference is that user-generated content and information on Web2 platforms are contained within siloed ecosystems. Today the internet Web2 giants such as Amazon and Google come from the foundations laid in the internet era.

We are once again at a crossroads in the evolution of the Web into a new decentralised iteration known as Web3. Through features such as value exchange and decentralization, Web3 aspires to shift the paradigm of previous iterations. Users will now be able to get value in exchange for the content value they contribute, and decentralised systems will be built to empower users. In another sense, however, Web3 is an attempt to return to the earliest visions of the open web, built on a common neutral network.

As the inventor of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee said: “The web was designed to be decentralised so that everybody could participate by having their own domain and having their own webserver and this hasn’t worked out. Instead, we’ve got the situation where individual personal data has been locked up in these silos. […] The proposal is, then, to bring back the idea of a decentralised web.”

With Web3, who we are online as individuals is becoming increasingly significant, and it will become even more so in the future. Most significantly, Web3 contributes to the development of a framework and infrastructure for the metaverse, an activity-based immersive ‘always on’ digital environment. Therefore, in this article, we will investigate the concept of the metaverse and the importance of interoperability to enable a sustainable digital world.

Also Read: To infinity and beyond: Why 2022 will be the year of Web3

What is the metaverse?

When you think of an HTML interface, you are looking at a product of the Web1. At the dawn of the internet, the HTML interface was a basic and straightforward way for individuals to engage with the digital world. With the introduction of video calls and other features, the second version of the worldwide web, Web2, resulted in a more sophisticated and social media-oriented way to use the internet.

In comparison the Web3 is a complete paradigm shift, bringing an improved interface that will expand to spatial computing, AR wearables, virtual reality, and other connected devices, enabling unprecedented levels of creativity and engagement. Our ability to connect more in the digital world of the metaverse will result in the formation of entirely new marketplaces and the emergence of new protocols and ecosystems. As metaverse guru Matthew Ball explained: “The Metaverse will not develop as the internet did. Public institutions, military research labs, and independent academics led the latter’s development because they were effectively the only ones with the computational talent, resources, and ambitions to build a World Wide Web, and few in the industry understood its commercial potential. None of this is true when it comes to the Metaverse.”

The importance of ‘interoperability’ in the metaverse

One of the most popular and most powerful Web2 platforms, Facebook, recently announced a rebranding as Meta, a metaverse-focused company. Meta and other Web2 juggernauts such as Amazon, Facebook, and Apple are developing and acquiring the technology and toolsets needed to build their ‘walled garden’ version of the metaverse.  These platforms all want to establish their own rules for what the metaverse should be like, but they refuse to give up their feeling of propriety ownership.

Gaming ecosystems such as Unity used to be the sole understandable concept of the metaverse, but as new standards are developed, there is bound to be more uncertainty about a metaverse built on open standards and easy interoperability. “For the Metaverse to thrive, we need developers to thrive. And this means making it as easy to take a virtual immersive educational environment or AR playground from one platform to another as it is to move a blog or newsletter,” argues Ball.

Also Read: Demystifying NFTs and DeFi

The rise of centralised Web2 platforms in the Web3 world may stifle the development of decentralised systems in the metaverse. The epitome of Web20 is siloed ecosystems, harvesting your data to turn a profit through hyper-targeted advertising; if each platform sets its metaverse standards, the risk is that Web3 will simply become a more hi-tech version of the current siloed ecosystems. As Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney warned in 2016 when talk of the decentralised web was starting to become popular, the metaverse is going to be “far more pervasive and powerful than anything else. If one central company gains control of this, they will become more powerful than any government and be a god on Earth”.

The Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA), created in 2003, is one alliance that has had a significant impact on the World Wide Web. It was a group of global companies who came together to make it simple to connect and enjoy photos, music, and video across networked consumer products, PCs, and mobile devices. This, according to the Alliance, meant that industry collaboration and standards-based interoperability resulted in attractive products. This collaboration resulted in the simple, innovative digital products that we now have on the market, including TVs, DVD and Blu-ray players, games consoles, and digital media players.

Also Read: ‘NFTs provide new ways to handle IP management, empower content creators’: Inmagine CEO Warren Leow

BigONE believes that a similar partnership for Metaverse companies would aid in the establishment of a common standard protocol for metaverse interoperability. The key challenge for such open standards to be fit-for-purpose for the metaverse is this: they need to offer a compelling financial incentive to developers above and beyond a ‘wall garden’ platform from a Meta or a Disney.

There are grounds for optimism. Take the example of venture capital platform Outlier Ventures which is working on an operating system called Open Metaverse OS, a decentralised set of tools and technologies designed to operate only through open standards and APIs. In addition, they’ve developed a framework for assessing metaverses and toolkits for creating “user-centric” metaverse solutions based on Web3 principles.

While Boson Protocol aims to provide a decentralised platform for commerce, “a peer-to-peer system which replicates the benefits of a market intermediary, without the disadvantages of centralised systems”. There is already an open standard that allows for inter-operability from the get-go, with a payments system that is metaverse-friendly: the blockchain and the cryptocurrencies that sit on top of it.

What lies ahead?

The world is starting to get a taste of what the metaverse can offer to our lives and businesses. People can now work in a foreign company from the comfort of their own home, blurring the divide between the physical and digital worlds. We have to understand that metaverse is another unit, another, another universe that we can play in and do a lot of things and activities together in a virtual space. If I wanted to order some fried chicken or pizza, I could do it in the metaverse and have it delivered to us.

BigONE and I believe that there will be several metaverses or different types of personalised digital worlds where people can connect. Still, the most important thing is that there will be a standard and that these platforms will be interoperable in such a way that developers can profitably build new services. The metaverse may be still in its early stages, and there is much to learn, but one thing is sure: interoperability is required for an open metaverse to succeed.

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Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing contributions from the community. This season we are seeking op-eds, analysis and articles on Web3, climate tech and sustainability. Share your opinion and earn a byline by submitting a post.

Join our e27 Telegram group, FB community or like the e27 Facebook page

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