Financial Supervisory Service "Pursuing Multifaceted Measures to Support Fintech Companies' Overseas Expansion"

Lee Myung-soon, Senior Deputy Governor of the Financial Supervisory Service, is delivering a greeting at the briefing session.

[Asia Economy Reporter Song Hwajeong] The Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) has decided to pursue multifaceted measures, including support for building overseas networks, to assist domestic fintech companies in expanding abroad.

On the 14th, the FSS's Digital Financial Innovation Bureau and Global Market Bureau (Financial Hub Support Center), together with the Korea Fintech Support Center, held a fintech overseas expansion briefing session and announced these plans.

Lee Myung-soon, Senior Deputy Governor of the FSS, stated, "To support domestic fintech companies' overseas expansion, we will implement various measures such as holding overseas investor relations (IR) sessions, supporting the establishment of overseas networks, and cooperating with local supervisory authorities."

At the briefing, the FSS, Social Consulting Group, and Fintech Support Center explained topics such as overseas licensing and sandbox systems, overseas expansion procedures, and overseas expansion support projects. This was followed by presentations on overseas expansion cases by Toss, Kasa Korea, and Aizen Global.

Toss directly entered Vietnam in 2019, quickly gathering users and expanding excellent mobile services while accumulating data capabilities through its growth formula. It achieved 4th place in the finance category on the App Store, 10 million subscribers, and 3 million monthly active users. In the second half of 2021, Toss expanded to five countries?Indonesia (August), Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, and India (all in September)?launching the Toss app. Toss plans to enhance financial experiences by building its own credit scoring system (CSS) in Vietnam.

Kasa Korea was designated as an innovative financial service for its real estate digital asset-backed securities (DABS) issuance and trading service at the end of 2019 and established a Singapore subsidiary in 2020. In September last year, it became the first Korean company to obtain both the Collective Investment Scheme (CMS) and Recognized Market Operator (RMO) licenses from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), and opened the Kasa Singapore Exchange in September this year. Kasa Korea plans to launch DABS issuance and trading services in Singapore within this year and subsequently promote securitization and secondary trading services for various tangible and intangible assets beyond real estate.

Aizen Global acquired a local Vietnamese company in 2019 and launched an AI banking service called Credit Connect, which links data platforms and financial institutions to provide credit services to customers. Over approximately one and a half years, it secured 117 local partners in Vietnam. Credit Connect is provided to data platforms requiring banking services such as the local distribution market and digital solution platforms, and financial services are offered to electronic wallet users of the local mobile payment platform PayMe. This year, Aizen Global has applied for approval from the Indonesian Financial Services Authority (OJK) to acquire a P2P company in Indonesia and plans to expand into other Southeast Asian regions following Vietnam and Indonesia.

An FSS official said, "We plan to continue listening to the difficulties faced by fintech companies and create various opportunities to resolve them."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.