The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) have launched the linkage between Singapore’s PayNow and India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI). This will enable customers of participating financial institutions in Singapore and India to send and receive funds between bank accounts or e-wallets across the two countries in real-time.
Malaysia-based marketing technology startup Involve Asia has announced raising $10 million in an investment round led by Bintang Capital Partners. The fresh funding will be used to support Involve Asia’s expansion across Southeast Asia and Australasia, as well as the development of a new product suite to cater to increasing digital market needs of customers.
AgroFresh is expanding its Latin American scope with the launch of SmartFresh ProTabs for growers and packers in Brazil and Mexico. The technology is designed to put the ripening process on hold, so that softening and over-ripening occur much more slowly during storage and transport.
Martech keeps taking larger bites out of marketing budgets: 17.3% last year, 19.9% this year, 23.5% next year, and 30.9% five years from now, according to the latest CMO Survey. This despite barely more than half (56.4%) of current tools being used and nearly half (48.8%) of the survey respondents reporting worse-than-expected results. Oddly enough, marketers rate selecting marketing technologies as the thing they do best.