Financial services have evolved over time as banks and other financial institutions have improved the customer experience using digital solutions to make services faster and more convenient. The benefit of these developments has been profound, to the point where banking and financial services have been dramatically simplified and the cost of making transactions has been reduced substantially.

Southeast Asia is one of the most rapidly developing regions in the world and is set to become the world’s fourth-largest economy by 2030. However, more than 70% of the adult population across the region have limited access to financial services. Millions of SMEs face large funding gaps. The challenges preventing further take-up of financial services need to be overcome.

A commentary in collaboration with Banking Circle.

Cross-border payments are increasingly characterized by a dynamic and challenging market environment. On the one hand, the market is booming and expected to reach US$156 trillion this year. On the other, traditional international correspondent banking networks are shrinking at the same time that alternative rails that execute payments in real time are increasingly common. Thus, financial institutions (FIs) have more choice than ever, but being able to connect seamlessly to all the rails is not straightforward.

A commentary in collaboration with Banking Circle.

Cross-border payments in Asia Pacific have made significant strides in recent years, buoyed by strong economic growth and steady digitization of financial services. Estimated by McKinsey & Co. to have grown at 6% annually from 2011-2019, the region’s cross-border payments account for an increasingly large share of a global market expected to reach US$156 trillion globally this year.

Open banking is the use of application programming interfaces (APIs) to streamline the sharing of customer bank data with third parties. While that is the premise of all open banking, there are different “flavors” of it that can be observed across the Asia-Pacific (APAC). At a high-level, these can be roughly parceled into those that are market-led and those that are regulator-led.

As economic dynamism has shifted East to give rise to what has been termed the “Asian Century,” hundreds of millions of people across Asia have achieved middle income status. As affluence across the region grows, people are looking for ways to further build and diversify their wealth.

There is a raft of Digital Asset Tokenisation activity across Asia as many entities are developing and launching new tokenisation platforms. These players range from traditional institutions such as banks and exchanges to ambitious startup Fintechs looking to disrupt the existing modus operandi.

The Kapronasia team consists of industry experts from across the financial industry, covering payments, banking, capital markets, and blockchain technology.

 

There has been an exponential increase in contactless and online payments, driven by new technology which is leading to growing risks around the handling of the sheer number of disputes and reconciliation with credit card schemes.

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