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The People’s Bank of China wants fintech firms to pitch in on a government-controlled monitoring system to watch over financial transactions on the internet. Sun Gouofeng, director of general of the Bank’s research institute says it is unfair for taxpayers’ money to cover the costs arising from heightened regulation on fintech businesses. Making remarks at a conference, Gouofeng wants more of the major players in fintech to take the responsibility of funding its regulation.

The Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative (We-Fi), the first World Bank-led facility to advance women’s entrepreneurship at this scale, will work to enable more than $1 billion of financing to improve access to capital, provide technical assistance, and invest in other projects and programs that support women and women-led SMEs in World Bank Group client countries. The announcement was made at the G20 leaders’ summit.

A SME Finance Forum member, European Investment Bank Group (EIB), announced that it will provide €18.5 million to back a joint investment fund designed to lend money to SMEs through the crowdlending platform Lendix. Funding through the European Investment Fund (EIF), this is the second deployment of EIF funds through a lending marketplace to support small businesses. The initial release came after a 2016 investment in Funding Circle of the UK. It is the first marketplace lending investment in Continental Europe.

Tide, a digital-only banking app aimed at small businesses, has partnered with online lender iwoca, in a move to allow small companies access to loans of up to £100,000. Led by specialist fintech investor Anthemis, along with Passion Capital, LocalGlobe and Creandum, the company that backed Spotify, the startup raised $14 million. This is one of the largest Series A funding rounds closed by a fintech company this year.

For the first time in history the amount of SME loans from nonbank lenders has surpassed the 90 trillion won mark, according to Bank of Korea. South Korean nonbank financial institutions' lending to smaller firms surged nearly 10 trillion won ($8.8 billion) in the first four months of the year amid tighter government control on household loans. Nonbank lenders' outstanding loans to small and medium enterprises came to 90.7 trillion won as of the end of April, up 9.9 trillion won from the end of last year.

European SMEs have gained additional support in easier and more transparent domestic and cross-border trade. The Digital Trade Chain Consortium, which is made up of seven European banks, has selected IMB to partner with them in building a new blockchain-based trade finance for small- and medium-sized enterprises. Developed on the Linux Foundations’ Hyperledger Fabric blockchain, the platform with run on the IMB Cloud.