Digital infrastructure firm Equinix partners with AFIN to enhance open architecture financial platform, APIX, and boost the global FinTech ecosystem.
Equinix, Inc. announced their partnership with the ASEAN Financial Innovation Network (AFIN) yesterday. Equinix is “the world’s digital infrastructure company,” working to provide a platform for digital leaders to build and grow their businesses. Through Equinix, businesses can scale efficiently and excel in their digital services and product. Their Platform Equinix® will be leveraged to boost innovation in financial services solutions in Singapore as well as enhance the global FinTech ecosystem.
This collaboration will offer financial institutions a dedicated API Exchange (APIX) sandbox platform on Platform Equinix, providing FinTech firms with a “fast-provisioning and affordable, enterprise-grade, cloud-like, single tenanted hardware for production services.” The world’s first cross-border, open-architecture API marketplace and sandbox for collaboration between FinTechs and financial institutions, APIX already hosts hundreds of FinTechs and is used by many financial institutions to run proof of concepts in a fail-safe environment.
Sophie Ben Sadia, the Vice President of Partner Account Management, Equinix Asia-Pacific commented: “We see an acceleration of partnerships between FIs and FinTechs with digital trend and open banking development. This is pivotal to collaborate, innovate and transact with partners and investors. Our strategic partnership with AFIN will be the opportunity to offer a powerful platform that partners can tap into to innovate and grow the Digital Finance ecosystems in Southeast Asia and beyond.”
There has been a rapid growth period for the digitisation of financial services in Asia over the past few years, especially in ASEAN. The FinTech market has seen record growth in transactions and investments in recent years. Further spurred by the ongoing pandemic, financial institutions from the region are pushing to quickly increase their digital footprint. The openness and collaborative community between financial institutions and FinTech firms creates an innovative space for digital evolution. This partnership will be instrumental for building a digital bridge between financial institutions’ infrastructures and FinTech firms’ cloud-based platforms.
Pieter Franken, Special Advisor to the AFIN Board, added: “The future of financial services is going to be open, instant, and everywhere. For greater financial innovation and inclusion to take place, co-creation needs to happen. Through our partnership with Equinix, AFIN believes that we will further reduce barriers to entry and time-to-market for FIs and FinTechs in Southeast Asia, paving the way for regional and global financial inclusivity in the future.”
The ASEAN Financial Innovation Network (AFIN) is a nonprofit organisation founded in 2018 by the ASEAN Bankers Association (ABA), International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group, and the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). AMTD Foundation and Mastercard are AFIN’s Corporate Founding Members.
Featured banner image from equinix.sg
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