Asia, like every other part of the world, has seen tremendous increase in fintech investment. China leads the pack with big players like the Ant Group, but startups in other countries in the region are gradually revving up their game.

Ascend Money, the Thailand-based fintech startup announced that it has raised a $150 million Series C round led by Charoen Pokphand Group, a major shareholder of Ascend Money, with participation from Bow Wave Capital Management and returning backer Ant Group.

The round puts Ascend Money’s valuation, who is behind Truemoney, an e-wallet service, at $1.5 billion.

The company was founded in 2013, and has since witnessed significant growth, especially between 2020 and 2021, when the pandemic mostly impacted digital payments.

Ascend Money said it will use the proceeds to grow its e-wallet application – TrueMoney Wallet, and expand its digital financial services – from digital lending and digital investment to cross border remittances in Southeast Asia. Target countries as it plans to expand global operations are Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, Myanmar, Cambodia, and the Philippines.

The fintech industry has witnessed outrageous growth since the outbreak of the pandemic, with most players in the sector growing their customer-base as well as their valuation through lucrative investments.

Following this trajectory, Tanyapong Thamavaranukupt, co-President of Ascend Money told TechCrunch that TrueMoney Wallet have grown exponentially because of social distancing measures and growing public awareness of contactless transactions across the region. As a result, the e-wallet customer-base in Thailand has grown from 17 million in early 2021 to 20 million as of now, while the transactions of its online payment use case surged over 75%, Thamavaranukupt said.

“The growth in e-payment suggests changing consumers’ spending habits as Southeast Asia moves toward a digital economy and a cashless society,” Thamavaranukupt said.

As more people embraced digital payment, TrueMoney became a popular choice. Its total payment volume stood at $14 billion in 2020 across the six countries in Southeast Asia, representing 84% growth between 2019 and 2020, according to its statement.

“The pandemic’s disruptive effects have accelerated the growth of the digital economy across Southeast Asia,” Itai Lemberger, founder and CEO of Bow Wave Capital Management said.

About 70% came from Thailand while 30% came from the international market, the co-President Thamavaranukupt said. In Thailand, Ascend Money has about 70% of market share based on its own research, Thamavaranukupt said.

The company told TechCrunch it has amassed a total of 50 million users so far through TrueMoney and offline channels including approximately 88,000 TrueMoney agent networks, which is its core strength for regional expansion.

Truemoney has also found a place in B2B transactions, serving as a payment channel for services ranging from big brands to local SME owners as well as street market entrepreneurs. Thamavaranukupt said beyond serving as a payment channel, TrueMoney Wallet platform provides digital loans service to the customers including small business entrepreneurs, who don’t have traditional credit scores to access the digital loans, along with the payment service.

“Apart from e-wallet, we are an agent-based payment and remittance service provider. Since last year, we’ve also rolled out TrueMoney Wallet for agent [networks] and migrated our offline agent to the online platform, which would help enhance and digitize their operations,” Thamavaranukupt said.

True Money agents are local entrepreneurs, who registered with Ascend Money to earn additional income by being their agents to provide services like bill payment, phone top-up and domestic and cross-border remittance services, he explained.

“We provide TrueMoney Wallet and the TrueMoney Agent service in some other countries outside Thailand. Most users are unbanked and the underbanked population with limited access to basic financial services,” Thamavaranukupt said.

“Ascend Money provides a financial platform of opportunity for those financially excluded as well as SMEs around the region. The company’s success is also a testament to Thailand’s capability and strong ecosystem to support domestic fintech firms and startups for overseas expansion,” Ascend Money founder and chairman of the board Suphachai Chearavanont.

As part of its growth, Ascend has been innovatively creating exclusive services to meet the needs of its users. Thamavaranukupt said that the company opened a service for expatriates like Myanmarese and Cambodian migrant workers in Thailand last year, enabling them to register on TrueMoney Wallet and transfer money to their family in the homeland.

In the contemporary global community, crimes have abruptly and obviously become prevalent in such a manner that one could boldly assert that they are swiftly becoming synonymous with the modern society otherwise known as the ‘digital age’.

As such uncalled and barbaric activities prevail unabated, it has conspicuously become imperative for the concerned authorities in every affected area to think inwards with a view to initiating new innovative mechanisms towards combating them.

Mobile technology such as tracking devices otherwise known as ‘trackers’, which has emerged as a powerful crime-fighting tool, has shown significant impact in recent years on most countries across the globe.

A tracker is specially programmed equipment meant to trace the actual location of a person or thing. However, it’s worth noting that devices like cell phones, computers, cameras, and what have you, can equally function as a tracker if adequately utilized.

Cell phones, particularly Smartphones, contain inbuilt mechanisms including Global Positioning System (GPS) among other location information that the various law enforcement agencies find valuable. Information like voice call history, text/multimedia messages, phonebook contacts, web browser history, and email, can tremendously help investigators to gather people’s aims and the occasions they have attended, thereby providing the required direction.

Tracking people via their mobile devices has been adopted by several agencies in most nations, and has become very much a part of most investigations because virtually every adult now possesses a cell phone. Cell phone records can identify calls made and received.

The cellular towers that were used in the conversation, data communication, as well as the Short Message Service (SMS), can as well be obtained.  The cell phone records hold latitude and longitude information that can be used as a historical reference to identify where the mobile device was at a particular period.

Similarly, citizens are advised to regularly send digital photos and videos of crimes in their custody to apt quarters. New technology allows sent images to be directly linked to the record of a related call, and be forwarded to emergency respondents on their way to the crime scene.

A good example of such technology is CrimePush, a multiplatform Smartphone app that allows users to report crimes effectively and at ease. It equally gives users the ability to forward multiple GPS-tagged distress messages to designated emergency contacts/quarters.

High-profile criminal incidents all over the world have proven beyond doubts how valuable mobile phone images can be during crime investigations. The bombings in the United Kingdom (UK), precisely London, in July 2005 marked a turning point in news coverage and the role of camera phone images.

Witnesses to the attacks used their cell phone cameras to record their experiences in the aftermath. Not only did it signal a new era of citizen journalism, but police in London were able to use the sent photos as clues towards tracking the terrorists that masterminded the bombings.

SMS is more discreet and safer in some circumstances to include burglaries and kidnapping. Several police departments in various countries have text-a-tip programs that allow people to send anonymous messages from their cell phones.

With a view to providing people with a confidential means of communication, SMSs are sent to a separate third-party server where identifying information is removed and assigned an encrypted alias to ensure callers’ anonymity.

The various security agencies on the African continent, especially the police, are required to fully employ the use of various tracking devices in issues regarding crimes. Technology is being developed and deployed by several criminals to perpetrate crimes, with the aim of leaving no, or little, digital footprint. This ranges from selling illicit goods on the internet to mass identity theft and credit card fraud.

Vehicle crime equally poses a dynamic challenge to these agencies. Vehicle crime investigators are invariably faced with ever-changing technology as well as regular introduction of new vehicle models. Modern vehicles are more like mobile computers constantly threatened by hackers. The police must take note of this fact and advance on it.

Digital forensics is a branch of science encompassing the recovery and investigations of materials found in digital devices including computers, cell phones, and cameras. The police will continue to be challenged to acquire the needed tools and training to perform competent digital forensic investigations, and keep pace with criminal activity.

On this premise, it has become pertinent for digital forensic departments to be designed in all police quarters, and such units ought to be sustained by continually providing the required equipment, manpower, and environment as time progresses.

Legislation can also be of help while discussing this new innovation. Hence, lawmakers of the various concerned countries ought to provide enabling laws, mandating all vehicles coming into their territories to bear micro-dotting technology. This would ensure that each vehicle contains approximately 1000 hidden markers that hold the identity of that vehicle, so that, in the event of the vehicle being stolen, it can be easily identified.

Importantly, the locations of the 0.5mm dots are not visible to thieves, thus cannot be altered by them. The police personnel should also be trained on how to identify data-dot technology. Continual in-service training would, therefore, be very helpful in this regard towards boosting staff confidence and competence.

The extant Cybercrime Acts in the countries under review should be reviewed by the present legislatures therein, and consequently implemented by setting up a special unit under the Police Force that would be in charge of crimes involving the internet.

Such a unit must possess all the needed devices and experts. The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), alongside similar agencies across Africa, is on its part expected to play a major role in crimes pertaining to the use of cell phones, thus the police must endeavour to collaborate with the commission.

The truth remains that, for Africa as a people to properly tackle all kinds of crimes, the relevant authorities must boast of various well-equipped sensitive units on digital investigations, cyber security, and/or electronic discovery, as the case may be.

As sophisticated crimes evolve on a daily basis in our present days’ society, it has conspicuously become imperative for all the relevant authorities to equally consider deploying sophisticated measures with a view to tactically tackling the societal menace no matter whose ox is gored.

At this juncture, I candidly implore the various law enforcement agencies and agents operating in various nations yet to embrace the current realities, to do so with all manners of seriousness and as a matter of urgency.

All the needed technicalities and techniques must be duly employed by the concerned bodies and individuals towards aptly arriving at the desired destination. It is not rocket science, but apt deployment of required tech measures as highlighted herein.

It’s indeed high time we did the needful in a bid to salvage our respective societies that have seemingly been overtaken by men of the underworlds. This can only be accomplished by jettisoning all forms of frivolities for priorities’ sake.