Behind ex-Ovo CEO’s new blockchain venture

The Top Up is Tech in Asia’s free newsletter that breaks down the biggest stories and trends in fintech. [Read from your browser]( The Top Up 💵 Welcome to The Top Up! Delivered every Wednesday via email and through the Tech in Asia website, this free newsletter breaks down the biggest stories and trends in fintech. If you’re not a subscriber, get access by [registering here](. Written by Melissa Goh Fintech Journalist Hello {NAME} , I was an exchange student in South Korea before multicurrency forex cards were mainstream. To get ready for the trip, I applied for a Citibank spending account, which my peers said was the most convenient for cash withdrawals. (The focus wasn’t really on foreign exchange rates back then, but rather on the ease of making transfers.) Alas, my application took longer than expected, and by the time my debit card arrived via snail mail, I’d taken off to Seoul. Instead, I brought a wad of cold hard cash, praying that I wouldn’t get mugged before I could find a local bank branch to deposit my money. (I didn’t.) All was fine until a few months later when I needed some cash in an emergency. Wiring the money from Singapore was excruciating - it required funds to be sent via telegraphic transfer and done in person at a bank branch. This cost me a few days and a significant (and opaque) processing fee at an uncompetitive exchange rate. But there were few other options back then. Today, multicurrency card operators like Wise, Revolut, and YouTrip have reshaped the forex landscape for students and travellers. But on a larger, commercial scale, multicurrency central bank digital currencies and multicurrency digital currency corridors have the potential to be the real game changers. In this week’s big story, Mike looks at Partior, which is headed by former Ovo CEO Jason Thompson and is a joint venture by financial industry heavyweights DBS and J.P. Morgan, as well as Singapore’s state-owned investment firm, Temasek. The blockchain-based wholesale payments aims to disrupt current cross-border money flows, which now involve multiple intermediaries. Based on digitized commercial bank money, settlements on Partior are faster, cheaper, and more transparent. In this week’s hot take, we also dive into the concept of “money streaming” - the idea of a paying out money (e.g., salaries) in a continuous flow, down to the hour or minute - which crypto communities such as Mean DAO are developing with its most recent fundraise. -- Melissa THE BIG STORY  [Behind the crypto project backed by Temasek, JP Morgan, DBS]( Image credit: Timmy Loen Helmed by Ovo’s former CEO, Partior has the potential to upend global payment processing by making it faster, cheaper, and more transparent. THE HOT TAKE  Streaming money like streaming videos Example of a consumer use case of money streaming / Photo credit: Mean DAO’s Money streaming whitepaper  Here’s what happened: - Mean DAO raised US$3.5 million in funding from investors, including Softbank’s SB Opportunity Fund - Mean DAO is a decentralized autonomous organization made up of over 19,000 members, serving 31,000 users on its platform, and running on the Solana blockchain - The new capital will expand Mean’s money-streaming service Here’s our take: (For the uninitiated, a [DAO]( can be thought of as an “internet community with a shared bank account” - somewhat like pooled capital that can be used to fund projects or manage open source blockchain projects together.) Unless you’re self-employed or work on a freelance basis, chances are that you get a monthly paycheck on a fixed date every month. It’s also likely that someone from your company’s finance department manually inputs, checks, and approves the transactions. Money streaming on the Mean Protocol opens up the possibility of salaries being paid out (a.k.a. “streamed”) automatically and on a fixed schedule. Funds can be paid out more frequently - maybe every two weeks or even every minute - so that employees are literally paid as they work. This is possible because Mean DAO is built on Solana, an Ethereum competitor that can supposedly process tens of thousands of transactions per second and finalize each transaction in [under a second]( all while keeping processing fees low. Another unique feature of MeanFi is that its usage isn’t restricted to finance. You can use it to pay for your monthly subscriptions to services like Netflix or a contractor you’ve hired to fix up your home’s air conditioning unit for three hours on a Saturday. If that sounds remotely familiar, that’s because it is: It’s like the monthly money transfers you’ve set up for insurance premiums or the standing instruction to transfer a fixed sum of money from your spending bank account to your savings, just so you don’t spend it all. The difference is that bank-to-bank transfers can only be done immediately or set to a predetermined future date, not by the hour or the minute. Mean DAO isn’t the only one developing money streaming. [Superfluid]( which raised US$9 million in July, is another company developing what it calls “[modular asset streaming]( where DAOs and businesses can be paid in a continuous stream, flowing from wallet to wallet. Money streaming could benefit workers by giving them quick access to their salaries. Illiquidity in the current wage model is precisely what has driven the rise of earned-wage access (EWA) startups, a trend we [examined]( previously. The EWA space includes players such as Indonesia’s [GajiGesa]( and Vietnam-based [Gimo]( and even UK-based Revolut, which has an advance-salary feature in the country. With an expanding global gig economy, it’s supposedly a billion-dollar market. But even EWA startups have their limitations. Employees - or sometimes firms - pay a token withdrawal fee to obtain a lump-sum portion of their current paychecks during the month. They then receive the remaining portion of their salaries from the employer on their actual payday. While it does the job, it’s far from a seamless process. Money streaming could have broad social implications if it takes off. For one, it could drastically reduce the need for short-term credit: many workers, especially those who live from paycheck to paycheck (an estimated [125 million adults in the US]( could tide themselves through the month with their own earned wages, instead of turning to formal or informal credit. -- Melissa NEWS YOU SHOULD KNOW Also check out Tech in Asia’s coverage of the fintech scene [here](.  1️⃣ [Singapore suspends crypto exchange amid dispute with BTS]( The Monetary Authority of Singapore has suspended Bitget, a crypto exchange that was promoting the Army Coin - named after the fanbase of South Korean boyband BTS - without permission from the band’s agency.  2️⃣ [Fintech unicorn Revolut gets CMS license from MAS]( With the capital markets services license, the UK-based firm will be looking to launch a stock trading feature in Singapore in the first half of 2022.  3️⃣ [South Korean lending platform lands $64m in series C funding]( Peoplefund, an online lending platform that connects lenders with unbanked individuals, claims it has disbursed more than US$980 million in loans as of October.  4️⃣ [Binance's Singapore crypto hub plans in regulatory limbo]( Binance was eyeing the city-state as a home base for its global operations, but with its license still under review by the country’s regulator, the crypto exchange has hinted that it might withdraw its application and turn elsewhere.  5️⃣ [Facebook Messenger is testing a new ‘split payments’ feature in the US]( The feature allows users to split bills and expenses, modify contributions for each person, and send personalized messages in a group chat.  6️⃣ [Alipay, iQiyi bolster payments partnership]( The partnership will allow the online video company to expand its market outreach through additional payment methods, facilitating cross-border payments, and joint marketing campaigns. That’s it for this edition - we hope you liked it! Do also check out previous issues of the newsletter [here](. Not your cup of tea? You can unsubscribe from this newsletter by going to your “edit profile” page and choosing that option in our preference center. In the meantime, if you have any feedback or ideas, feel free to get in touch with Terence, our editor-in-chief, at terence@techinasia.com. See you next week! P.S. Don't miss out on the biggest tech news and analysis. Add newsletter@techinasia.com to your address book, contacts, or safe sender list. Or simply move us into your inbox. Too many emails? Switch to a different frequency or get new content through our [preference center]( or [unsubscribe](. You can also break our hearts and remove yourself from all Tech in Asia emails over [here](  Copyright © 2021 Tech in Asia, All rights reserved. 63 Robinson Road, Singapore 068894