This has facilitated the growth of entrepreneurs by providing finance to about 1.3 million crowdfunding projects. Crowdfunding platforms also allow entrepreneurs to closely engage with their customers – themselves investors – to shape and refine product ideas. A good example is the role played by crowdfunding in the rise of virtual reality (VR), which was largely ignored by traditional funders after its disappointing performance in the 1990s. Oculus Rift or the VR technology as we know would never have happened without crowdfunding. Such success stories can be an inspiration for our SMEs. With SMEs in Malaysia facing difficulty in obtaining capital and mezzanine financing, crowdfunding and P2P platforms can be further explored to meet such funding needs. Third, the matching of funds enabled by fintech also has great application within the social financing space. In particular, we see the potential of digitising the collection and utilisation of zakat, waqaf and sadaqah as holding great promise. The efficiency and transparency enabled by technology not only provides greater convenience to customers, but more importantly, builds public trust and confidence in the system. In turn, this will see wider participation and greater contributions towards social impact initiatives such as those to improve education, widen access to healthcare and extend humanitarian relief. We are already seeing encouraging developments in this space. For example, SkolaFund raised over RM200,000 in 2016 to fund 25 students from less-privileged families studying in universities and colleges in Malaysia.
In fact, I see fintech as the nexus between finance and entrepreneurship. Finance is essential in helping startups and entrepreneurs get off the ground and scale up. Likewise, entrepreneurs can help to reinvent finance by providing ideas to develop innovative financial solutions. This morning, I would like to share some of my thoughts on fintech and on how the finance industry, especially Islamic finance can gain from technology-driven solutions. I will also elaborate on how multisided platforms are facilitating the interaction between investors and ventures. I will then briefly touch on the efforts that Bank Negara Malaysia is taking in promoting fintech. While Islamic finance has made significant progress domestically and globally, the next growth phase requires the industry to ride the fintech wave. At present, Islamic finance fintech is still in its infancy and growing. Encouragingly, we are seeing increasing number of fintech start-ups, innovation labs and incubators that are based on the values and principles of Islamic finance. However, they are not as visible and omnipresent as their conventional peers. The case is compelling for Islamic finance to take on a more prominent role in the fintech ecosystem. The technology is ripe, with higher penetration of mobile and internet across markets. Consumers are also becoming more and more tech-savvy. Digital-banking consumers stand at an estimated 670 million in Asia alone and are expected to reach 1.7 billion by 2020. In Malaysia, within a population of 31 million, there is high mobile and internet penetration rate at about 141% and 81% respectively.