livi bank
“Can a Hong Kong virtual bank build enough differentiated everyday-rewards banking to hold ground against seven equally well-funded competitors?”
Founded2019
HQQuarry Bay, Hong Kong
IndustryFintech / Neobank
The story
livi bank is a Hong Kong virtual bank (JV of BOC Hong Kong, JD Digits, and Jardine Matheson) launched under the HKMA's virtual bank licensing regime in 2019. Its product is a mobile-first retail and SME account with deposits, virtual debit card, QR payments, and lending — running on its own banking licence rather than a BaaS provider. Recent public activity is limited: employee count declined ~7% YoY and the bank has focused on retention within the crowded Hong Kong virtual-bank cohort (ZA Bank, WeLab, Mox, PAObank).
Last 12 months
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Product timeline
2019
Founded as one of eight HKMA-licensed virtual banks in Hong Kong· banking
2020
Launched retail banking mobile app with deposits, virtual debit card, and QR payments· banking
2023
Published livi API terms and launched Open API developer portal· banking
Regulated entities
1
regulatory licence held by livi bank
Licence types, jurisdictions and registered entities are in the Embedded Finance Index report.
The stack
4 layers disclosed in livi bank’s embedded-finance stack
Payments / PSP
livi Payments (self-operated)
Banking / BaaS
in the full report
Card issuing
in the full report
Lending
in the full report
Accounting gap: none
5 more providers across 3 layers, with confidence-scored evidence and source URLs, are in the Embedded Finance Index report.