CDIB Capital Innovation Accelerator (CCIA), established by China Development Financial (CDF; TWSE: 2883), jointly hosted its first FinTech Salon, with the theme “financial micro-innovation & unique business models”, alongside group member KGI Bank’s FinTech team, KKday, AsiaYo, and a number of other promising start-ups. KKday and AsiaYo are among the portfolio companies CDIB invested in through its Innovation Accelerator Fund (“Innovation Fund”). CCIA supports start-ups with customized scenario-based financial services, such as digital identity verification and digital credit loans.
The Innovation Fund, established in 2017 by CDIB Capital Group (CDIB), a subsidiary of CDF, has been engaged in early-stage investment, with a fund size of NT$1.29bn. CDIB Capital also established CCIA, which offers start-up mentoring, corporate resource matching and a variety of start-up courses, providing Taiwanese start-ups with a one-stop resource for growth. CDIB plans to raise for a second innovation fund by the end of this year, aiming for partnership with more global strategic investors.
As the new economy industry has platform-ized over recent years, Ryan Guo, President of the Innovation Fund, said, “Where there is trade there is FinTech”. Ming Chen, founder of KKday and Wayne Lai, co-founder of AsiaYo, also emphasized the importance and demand for innovative financial service solutions such as overseas payment systems and online credit card payment identity verification as start-ups are extending services to overseas markets.
Zhe-yu Chen, Vice President of FinTech & New Financial Services of KGI Bank, said the team’s core mission is “KGI Inside”, which places a focus on growing together with FinTech start-ups. “Opening a bank for your platform” means to fragment and modularize financial services into an API-type existence (note 1), providing start-ups with seamless plug-and-play integration with financial services.
KGI Bank finds that young consumers, in addition to those lacking financial credit records, tend to opt for “buy now pay later” as a form of payment. However, they still have the need for credit products and prefer those with simplicity, intuitive transparency and autonomy. By helping start-up platforms establish small-amount revolving credit loan systems in trading scenarios, the Bank found that more than half of consumers consumed more and nearly 90% of them were willing to use the system again. Compared with credit card transaction fees, operating costs of such platforms are relatively low.
Attending start-ups also included KKday, a travel-experience booking platform, AsiaYo, an online room booking platform, Dentall, Rentincredit, Dudoo, a smart POS (note 2) system for restaurants under Hon Hai and StyleUp, an online beauty and care service reservation platform.
