China’s fintech sector was never the same after November 3, 2020. That was the day Chinese regulators abruptly nixed Ant Group’s mega IPO, a dual Shanghai and Hong Kong listing that was expected to raise US$37 billion and value the Chinese fintech giant at a whopping US$315 billion. The cancellation of Ant’s IPO proved to be the beginning of an extended campaign to curb the dominance of Big Tech in China’s financial services industry.

BNPL, or buy now pay later, is a type of payment option that allows customers to purchase items now and pay for them later in installments. This type of payment option has been gaining popularity in recent years, especially among younger shoppers. In fact, a recent study showed that BNPL usage has increased by 400% among millennials in the past two years.

BNPL first emerged in Asia in 2014 and has since become extremely popular in countries like China, South Korea, and Singapore. In China, for example, the BNPL market is expected to grow from $30 billion in 2020 to $750 billion by 2025. It could be argued that Australia was the epicentre of BNPL in Asia with such previous market leaders including Afterpay and Zip. So, what is driving this massive growth? Let's take a closer look at BNPL in Asia and how it works.

The Hong Kong financial center lexicon is ever expanding. Depending whom you ask, Hong Kong is an international financial center, Asia’s most important financial center, China’s offshore financial center or some combination of all three. Historically, Hong Kong liked to stay out of politics and thrived on its combination of laissez-faire capitalism, strong, independent legal system and knack for acting as a bridge to the Chinese mainland. Going forward, those factors will remain integral to Hong Kong’s success, but important questions remain about how economic and financial policy choices on the mainland will affect the city’s fortunes.

The Philippines recently experienced a setback in its fight against financial crime: The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) declined to remove the Southeast Asian country from its grey list, on which it was placed in June 2021 for having inadequate money-laundering and counterterrorism financing controls. After a two-day plenary in October, Paris-based FATF decided to keep the Philippines on the list along with 22 other jurisdictions.

The newest digital bank in Singapore stealthily came into existence, flying below the radar in contrast to the high-profile race for digital banking licenses that ended with victories by Grab-Singtel, Sea, Ant Group and a consortium headed by China’s Greenland Holdings. Now competing with these four digital banks is Trust Bank, launched in September by Standard Chartered and NTUC FairPrice, Singapore’s largest supermarket chain.

Thailand has never been in a rush to introduce digital banks. After all, the kingdom is neither a financial center like Hong Kong or Singapore, nor does it have a huge unbanked population likes Indonesia and the Philippines. About 81% of Thais have a bank account. However, it is possible that introducing online banks could improve competition in Thailand’s financial sector – and that appears to be one of the key goals of the Bank of Thailand (BoT) as it moves forward on digital banks.

Being placed under increased monitoring by the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) is never welcome news for a country. Besides the reputational damage that comes along with such a designation, there are many practical problems caused by the restrictions that may be put on financial transactions as well as burdensome compliance requirements. Most countries are put on FATF’s gray list due to inadequate money laundering and counterterrorism financing controls. However, occasionally a country is added to the blacklist – reserved for the countries that pose the most serious financial crime risks – including North Korea and Iran – which is what happened to Myanmar last month.

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.

The proof of the tentative state of Australia’s bid to introduce greater competition into its financial services sector is in the pudding: The country’s big four incumbent lenders have increased in size despite the high-profile launches of different neobanks in recent years. Of that crop of upstarts, the last one left standing is Judo Bank. The others have either collapsed or been acquired. Meanwhile, the big four are arguably stronger than ever.

China’s largest ever tech crackdown has failed to dethrone Alipay and WeChat Pay from their dominance of the country’s fintech sector, even if it has reduced their profitability. For better or worse, the duopoly seems to have staying power, especially in payments, the stickiness of the respective super apps evident. However, there has long been a line of thinking that payments interoperability and the digital renminbi together will pose a threat to the duopoly. Following recent comments by a senior People’s Bank of China (PBoC) official about the need to standardize QR codes, there is renewed speculation that the payments hegemony of China’s fintech juggernauts could be waning.