ORIX Partners with Cyberport on the Fintech Co-creation Project

Seeking to Transform SME Supply Chain Finance Ecosystem in Hong Kong

ORIX (ORIX) partners with Cyberport on a Fintech Co-creation project – Call for Innovation 2023. The project aims to promote a marketplace with more open, dependable digital verification systems to advance the reconciling and funding efficiency of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) among banks and financiers and welcomes solutions from professionals in decentralized finance (DeFi) technology and the wider web 3.0 community in Hong Kong.

ORIX seeks to accelerate the group’s digital transformation, improve business efficiency and achieve sustainable development through the partnership and adoption of appropriate, innovative technical solutions, which will be piloted with their new consumer finance brand BYON.

Solve the Pain Points of SME Financing

SMEs in Hong Kong have long been facing difficulties in obtaining financing solutions to cope with business capital needs, a problem exacerbated by information asymmetry, lack of collaterals, insufficient credit history, access denial, and more.

“Call for Innovation” aims to promote a marketplace with a more open, dependable digital verification system to advance SMEs’ reconciling and funding efficiency among banks and financiers. To realize this vision, a distributed ledger system will be built onto a permissioned blockchain platform to record the intrinsic data of SMEs under a decentralized archive approach like a digital identity management system.

Anita Chau, Head of Ecosystem Development of Cyberport, said “As Hong Kong enters a new chapter in finance, there is increasing market demand for financial innovation, DeFi and web3 related solutions. I am very pleased to collaborate with ORIX through Cyberport Enterprise Network (CEN). The Group’s diversified financial services and application scenarios would help accelerate commercialization of Cyberport startups. I hope that the ‘Call for Innovation’ project can be the starting point for our joint efforts in FinTech pilot initiatives, to encourage financial innovation while expanding the DeFi and web3 talent pool in Hong Kong.”

Princeton Wong, Head of Consumer Finance and Head of Fintech of BYON, added “In April 2022, we launched BYON with a focus on developing digitized and innovative consumer finance solutions, with the mission of breaking the boundaries of traditional financial services. Through the ‘Call for Innovation’ project, we are looking forward to collaborating with local experts in DeFi solutions and the wider web3 community, and to further advancing our solutions that serve the financing needs of SMEs. Meanwhile, we hope to promote more financial innovations and vigorous development of the financial ecology through our international network.”

“Call for Innovation 2023” Project Details

The project is now accepting applications and proposal submission deadline is March 31, 2023. Following the review of proposals and presentations in April, May will see the solution development by selected candidates with a funding up to HKD100,000 per project.

The project will seek to provide a suitable platform for emerging leaders in the industry to pilot and commercialize their solutions with BYON, with opportunities to implement globally at a group level, and make a difference in DeFi for the betterment of all SMEs.

The request for proposals focuses on the below areas:

• To devise and configure a competent and holistic scheme addressing the issues of decentralized digital identifier (DID) application and management for SMEs and stakeholders within the supply chain ecosystem
• To originate and articulate a set of blockchain-based smart contract paradigms applying for the execution and operation of SME-based supply chain financing practice
• To consider a hybrid DeFi scenario, formulate and proposition layer-two or layer-three decentralized applications (dApps) operating on permissioned blockchain to facilitate SMEs’ users on functions of finance, social media, gaming, voting and governance, fundraising, advertising, and file storage
• To consider a hybrid DeFi scenario, formulate and advocate types(s) and application(s) of utility tokens within a permissioned blockchain ecosystem to expedite SMEs’ users on functions of finance, social media, gaming, voting and governance, fundraising, advertising, and file storage

For more information, please refer to the information deck: bit.ly/3JRX8Tk.