PETALING JAYA: The local digital market is set to see more excitement this year as the next wave of digitalisation kicks in.
Before the end of 2019, Bank Negara finally released its licensing framework for digital banks with the issuance of up to five digital bank licences.
The race for digital bank licences is expected to intensify as a number of players have expressed their interest.
Besides the existing banks such as CIMB, Affin Bank, Hong Leong Bank, AMMB and Standard Chartered Bank, the e-money operators are also setting their sights on the digital banking space. It is widely speculated that big boys such as Boost, Grab, Touch ’n Go and BigPay would be the front runners.
The central bank is expected to finalise the policy document for digital banking by the first half of the year.
Meanwhile, the Securities Commission Malaysia’s (SC) move to regulate digital assets also marks a key milestone in the cryptocurrency segment.
Headquartered in London, Luno is the first digital asset exchange that received full approval from the SC to operate as a recognised market operator after it satisfied all the required conditions. With that, it is able to offer Malaysian the opportunity to safely buy, sell, and store cryptocurrency on its platform.
This comes after the SC registered three recognised market operators in June to establish and operate DAX in Malaysia. The other two are Sinegy Technologies (M) Sdn Bhd and Tokenize Technology (M) Sdn Bhd.
According to Bloomberg, Bitcoin, the largest digital token, has posted gains of more than 9,000,000% since July 2010.
2019 also saw the registration of EdgeProp Sdn Bhd as the first recognised market operator to establish and operate a property crowdfunding (PCF) platform in Malaysia.
PCF is an initiative announced in Budget 2019 to provide an alternative financing avenue for first-time homebuyers through a property crowdfunding scheme.
The robo advisory sphere welcomed two new operators MyTheo and Wahed last year, bringing the number of licensed and full operational robo-advisers to three. StashAway was the first operator after obtaining its license in November 2018.
Robo-advisers are a class of financial adviser that provides financial advice or investment management (based on mathematical rules or algorithms) online with moderate to minimal human intervention.
Two more robo-advisers, Raiz and Robo Wealth, have received approval-in-principle and are expected to be fully operational by this year.
