To enable the growth of Hong Kong’s fintech ecosystem, Invest Hong Kong (InvestHK) announced the soft launch of the FintechHK Community Platform, a centralised fintech platform to connect local and global fintech companies with Corporate, Investor, and Service Champions.
The platform is fully supported by the Financial Services and the Treasury Bureau (FSTB) and curated by InvestHK; the initiative comes as an extension of the Global Fast Track Programme, which garnered great industry participation in 2022.
Accelerating business connectivity
The FintechHK Community Platform will work to encourage local enterprises to expand their business to the Mainland, Southeast Asia, and other regions. Through the platform, fintech and champion users can explore and engage with one another.
Fintech companies can feature their company profile, value proposition, innovative solutions, fund-raising needs, and other details to platform users, helping to expand their exposure and reach across fintech communities in Asia and other regions.
On the other hand, corporates and investors can identify fintech solution providers and investment opportunities more easily, while service providers specialised in the fintech industry can also share their insights and latest capabilities to generate business opportunities with champions and fintechs that require expert support.
The Head of Fintech at InvestHK stated that they are incredibly pleased to see the encouraging feedback from partners and fintech companies from the pilot of the FintechHK Community Platform. He noted that this is, however, only the beginning of the development of the platform.
As fintech adoption among corporates and macroeconomic headwinds accelerate, it is now critical for fintech companies to raise market visibility. Thus, InvestHK urges companies to join and use the platform actively to realise opportunities and accelerate growth.
The next release is currently under development. It will include an enhanced interface and functions such as inter-user communications, competitions, and community event hosting. The next version targets to be ready in Q2 2023 to support initiatives for connecting potential business deals and funding opportunities such as the Global Fast Track 2023. The platform has already onboarded over 300 fintech organisations with more to follow.
Highlights of Global Fast Track 2022
This year, the Global Fast Track Programme received over 400 fintech applications from across 45 global economies, and support from over 100 champions across three categories – Corporate, Investor, and the newly added Service category.
As of mid-December, the programme has already facilitated over 175 one-to-one business meetings among participating fintech companies and champions, helping them to explore business opportunities and potential growth within the market and beyond.
Following a highly competitive judging process, only one finalist from each vertical, together with two wildcards nominated by the Banking, Financial Services and Insurance (BFSI) Accelerator 2022 from the Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation (HKSTP), progressed to the Final Pitching Competition which took place live at the main conference of Hong Kong FinTech Week on 31 October 2022.
On top of the original eight verticals – including Commercial Banking, Digital Assets, ESG, InsurTech, InvestTech & WealthTech, Payments, RegTech, and Retail Banking – the Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) track, launched in partnership with InvestHK and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA), was introduced into the Programme for the first time this year.
The CBDC track was well received by the market with over 80 applications. Shortlisted applicants had the opportunity to participate in the final pitching competition organised by the HKMA. All qualified candidates may also get to work with the HKMA on research projects and pilots to foster the future growth of the CBDC ecosystem.
