The banking system in Singapore has been under greater scrutiny ever since a few banks operating in the city were ensnared in Malaysia’s massive 1MDB scandal. There is an inherent contradiction that all financial hubs face when they try to attract the ultra-wealthy and their assets, but also want to ensure the highest degree of compliance. Inevitably, some clients have something to hide. When there is possible unusual activity, banks have to make the call whether it is necessary to flag the transactions and report them. Thus it is not surprising that Singapore said in a new report that its banking sector poses the highest money laundering risks following a scandal involving more than S$3 billion (US$2.2 billion) in illicit assets.

Ant Group, under its Ant International arm, has been on a sustained international expansion campaign that increasingly encompasses Europe. While the company’s core cross-border payments business still targets Asia, it also sees opportunity further afield. On July 1, Ant announced that MultiSafePay, an Amsterdam-based payment service provider, had become its wholly-owned subsidiary and will integrate with the Chinese company’s Antom platform.

It is hard to believe that more than five years have passed since Hong Kong first approved virtual banks. The disruption that had been forecast has not come to pass and we wonder how much longer some of the online lenders will endure. Those backed by large public companies – which have to explain to investors why they are supporting unprofitable endeavors – could be the first to throw in the towel. That said, Hong Kong-based WeLab Bank, which is backed by billionaire Li Ka-shing, has seemingly defied the odds thus far with its performance. It says it is on a clear path to profitability and is expanding strategically in Southeast Asia.

Not so long ago, when Hong Kong was struggling with the impact of civil unrest and strict Covid-19 controls, other cities in Asia sensed an opportunity to bolster their respective financial center credentials. Not Singapore, which is already an established Asian financial center – and has grown in recent years – but cities such as Tokyo and Taipei.

Indonesia has no shortage of digital banks, but it is also a huge market with a significant population that has limited access to formal financial services. It is a key market for Southeast Asian platform companies as well. While Grab has digital banking licenses for Singapore and Malaysia, Indonesia is where it has the best opportunity to prove the skeptics wrong.

Across Asia Pacific, criminals are using cryptocurrency to fund increasingly nefarious schemes. While early crime involving digital assets tended to target crypto exchanges themselves, the most infamous being the 880,000 Bitcoin stolen from Japan’s Mt. Gox between 2011 and 2014 now worth $45 billion – today digital assets are linked to money laundering, large-scale scams and funding of illegal arms programs. Crypto proponents usually insist that proper regulation can do much to mitigate this problem. Though regulation can boost investor protection and establish rules of the road, we believe that decentralized virtual currencies’ inherent nature means that potential for abuse will remain high. Regulators in some major jurisdictions in the region have come to similar conclusions and are acting accordingly.

Singapore has become one of Asia’s most important green finance centers, which is well exemplified by its third sale of green bonds in late May. The S$6 billion order book for the city-state’s third sale of green bonds was 2.45 times the amount offered to institutional investors. In addition, the offering of S$2.5 billion in bonds reached the maximum of the S$2.1 billion to S$2.5 billion range provided by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). The Singapore government has said there there is a pipeline of up to S$35 billion in sovereign and public-sector green bonds that will be issued by 2030.

How long has Revolut been saying it has big plans for Asia Pacific? At least six years, if not longer – by our calculations. It has a presence in Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore and India and at one time planned to set up shop in many other Asian countries. Yet this ethos originated in a time of low interest rates and near infinite VC funding. Revolut did not have to worry too much about profitability back then, so it could devote most of its attention to growth. At the same time, the multicurrency wallet that lies at the core of Revolut’s value proposition may not be that attractive to customers in emerging markets more focused on gaining access to core retail banking services.