eXponential Finance

During this episode of the Exponential Finance podcast, we have the opportunity to discuss the importance consumer empowerment across location, payments and loyalty with Batu Sat, Co-Founder & CEO of Mall IQ. Mall IQ, Inc. is a San Francisco based company offering a highly scalable Location Intelligence & AI Platform for mobile applications that is store-level accurate indoors & outdoo...

This episode is a recording of our premiere on LinkedIn Audio, where we exchange our impressions from the Singapore FinTech Festival held the week prior. We get to discuss the state of payments and crypto, and the coming convergence of these sectors, central bank digital currencies, the emerging opportunity for credit & lending, the surprising lack of AI during the festival, the hype of ESG, s...

During this episode of the Exponential Finance podcast, we have the opportunity to take a deep dive into the Klaytn universe and David’s perspective on content distribution in a Web3 environment, the concept of “Proof of Me” as a decentralized identity, and some other topics. Produced in collaboration with Tokyo FinTech. If you have an interesting story to share with our audience, and would like t...

Kevin Shimota is a leading specialist in digital products and platforms, having been a senior executive at WeChat (Tencent) with over a decade of experience in the industry. His ongoing work includes understanding innovations and trends coming out of Asia and how they will impact and adapt to the global community. Having recently published "The First Super App", Kevin traces with us WeChat's histo...

In this episode, we talk about Sleek, the SMEs’ all-in-one digital platform, helping over 6000+ entrepreneurs to start and manage their businesses. Sleek effectively operates as the SMEs’ co-pilot for all back-office processing, so that the entrepreneurs can focus on growing their business. Sleek is registered with the company registry and tax authorities of Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia and the...

In this episode, we first have the opportunity to discuss Japan's monetary policy under Bank of Japan Governor Kuroda, whose term expires next year, contrasting Japan's zero-interest-rate policy with the increasingly highly inflationary environment in the rest of the world. In the second part, we discuss certain aspects of the book "The Future of Financial Systems in the Digital Age", such as the...

In this episode, Tiffine Wang, Partner at MS & AD Ventures, an early stage venture fund backed by one of Japan’s – and the world’s – largest insurance groups, shares with us the stages of her career, and how this has shaped her investment approach. Tiffine is passionate about investing in big market bets that positively impact humanity and was voted as one of the Emerging Leaders in Corporate...

In this episode, we explore the Latin American FinTech ecosystem through a conversation with Mariana Franza, Chief Operating Officer at Uala, a fintech app focused on driving financial inclusion. Founded in 2017 in Argentina, Uala started as a payment wallet, and has just obtained a banking license in its home market. Uala expanded to Mexico in 2020, where it is also currently in the process of ac...

In this episode, we are going to talk about private markets with Oi-Yee Choo, Chief Executive Officer at ADDX.  ADDX is among a few Singapore-based platforms dealing in private market securities, offering global funds, real estate investment trusts, structured products and pre-IPO shares at fractional ownership to investors. ADDX offers issuance, custody and trading of digital securities usin...

In this episode, we are going to talk about compliance for crypto with Javier Tamashiro, Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer at Ospree. Ospree has been founded in 2019, and bootstrapped ever since, launching their integrated suite of crypto compliance tools at the end of 2020, covering client onboarding, blockchain analytics, and the travel rule. Ospree has been initially focused on startup c...

In this episode, Binur Zhalenov will share his experience as the Chief Executive Officer of one of the most significant FinTech R&D companies in Central Asia and the Caucasus region. Leading the Payment and Financial Technologies Center of the National Bank of Kazakhstan, Binur’s research focus is concentrated around payment innovations and artificial intelligence applications for macroeconomi...

In this episode, we are going to take a close look at the FinTech ecosystem in Brazil. If you have not had this market on your radar screen yet, that likely changed with the record-breaking IPO of Nubank on the New York Stock Exchange towards the end of last year, making the company the largest digital banking platform outside of Asia. The second focus of our conversation will be the work of the B...

DIA is a decentralized, open-source data and oracle platform for DeFi that enables market actors to source, supply and share trustable data. DeFi applications are reliant on trustable and scalable data feeds to build reliable products and avoid exploitation and manipulation. DIA leverages crypto-economic incentives and the wisdom of the community to source, validate and deliver trusted financial d...

In Japan it's called the "Ghosn Shock"—the stunning arrest of Carlos Ghosn, the jet-setting CEO who saved Nissan and made it part of a global automotive empire. Even more shocking was his daring escape from Japan, packed into a box and put on a private jet to Lebanon after months spent in a Japanese detention center, subsisting on rice gruel. This is the saga of what led to the Ghosn Shock and wha...

Code Chrysalis is a software engineering immersive and consultancy in Tokyo, teaching computer science fundamentals and modern web application development through a project-based curriculum that promotes career longevity, autonomy, and teamwork. Yan Fan is a co-founder and chief technology officer of Code Chrysalis, and Mio Maeshima a recent graduate. In this conversation, we are looking at softwa...

Romain Zanolo, Managing Director APAC, Financial Institutions at IDEMIA, discusses with us the payments & identity landscape across Asia. - What is augmented identity? - The value proposition for FinTech startups to work with IDEMIA and other companies made accessible through Visa's Partner Connect program - How Razer FinTech used IDEMIA to launch the "hottest" payment card in Singapore - How...

Chea Srun is a French national with a distinguished career in derivatives trading, having worked and lived in Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Seoul, and being able to converse professionally in all three languages. Chea is the Founder & CEO of X-Quant, a startup that got accepted into the Seoul FinTech Lab accelerator last year. In addition to his experience with the program, we talk a bit about Chea's...

Mihir Gandhi is a Partner in the Consulting practice of PwC India and leads the Payments Transformation practice. With close to 15 years of consulting experience, he has developed a strong business and technology consulting exposure in India and international markets including the Middle East, Africa and South East Asia. Mihir has been part of the digital payments growth story of India and has suc...

María Guajardo's passion is to do the greatest good for those with the greatest need; and to develop the next generation of global leaders. She served as Vice-President at Soka University, Tokyo, Japan, as the inaugural Dean of the Faculty of International Liberal Arts, and is recipient of the Soka University Award of Highest Honor. Soka University is one of eleven private universities with the di...

Manuel Silva Martinez oversees Mouro’s strategy, investor relations, resources and processes as the General Partner authorised by the FCA, with his day-to-day investment activity focusing more on UK, Europe and Latin America. Manuel sits on the boards of a55, bonify and Crosslend and, as observer, of Autofi, Creditas, Curve, Elliptic, Klar, Roostify and Tradeshift, among others. Manuel has been in...

Mami Kato is the Head of Public Relations and Communications at Revolut Japan, and the spokesperson for the business. Mami has over 15 years of experience as a corporate and financial communications professional. She worked at Japan’s largest PR firm and at a European strategic communications advisory company, where she mainly engaged in long-term corporate communications for the Fortune's most ad...

Heikki Vänttinen is Co-Founder at API3, a collaborative project to deliver traditional API services to smart contract platforms in a decentralized and trust-minimized way. It is governed by a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), its code is open source and its operations are completely transparent. In November, API3 announced the closing of their seed investment round with Placeholder, Pan...

Chris Thomas is the Head of Digital Assets at Swissquote Bank. Prior to joining the firm, Chris has combined his financial expertise with his passion for entrepreneurship as Head of European Innovation at Fidelity Investments, before successfully founding an institutional crypto-asset custodian. Swissquote Bank specialises in online financial and trading services. Based in Geneva, it is the first...

Tuhina Singh is the Co-Founder & CEO of Propine, a graduate from Singapore’s unique Entrepreneur First accelerator program, and the first native digital asset custodian regulated by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) through the Capital Markets Services (CMS) License. Propine is building a safe, regulated, and certified future for digital securities with the support and partnerships of...

Ricky Lee is the Founder & CEO of sync, and previously the creative mind behind the customer experience at Lloyds Banking Group and Revolut. sync is looking to lead the way in Smart Open Banking, allowing users to instantly open a current account in British Pounds or Euros in minutes and to provide them with the ability to open up more than 30 other currency accounts. Users are able to exchang...