Latest Reports

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    Navigating the Future of Fintech in Asia Although fintech has been a global phenomenon, nowhere has the combination of finance and technology been as impactful as in Asia. This report examines some of the key fintech trends that have been re-shaping Asia’s financial industry thusfar as well as examine the trends that will shape the future.
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    Top 10 Fintech Trends in APAC 2024 From financial inclusion to AI Fintech literacy, this report promises to be a highly valuable resource for staying ahead in the ever-evolving Fintech space, covering trends, issues, and challenges that will define 2024.
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    The Transformation of Retail Payments in Asia From the sprawling street markets of Bangkok to the high-tech shopping districts of Tokyo, the nature of retail payments is changing. Across Asia Pacific, a silent revolution is reshaping how consumers transact.

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Ant Financial will purchase 20 percent of Thai payments and online finance provider Ascend Money, with the right to increase its stake to 30 percent, China's Ministry of Commerce said in a statement on its website. 

Rumours are swirling that Alibaba’s Taobao will collaborate with UnionPay. While details are still unknown, this partnership is noteworthy as Alibaba's online payments system Alipay and UnionPay have been fierce rivals for the past ten years.

Apple has turned to the mobile payments industry after the smartphone business has slowed down, as a way to increase revenue streams. Apple Pay, Apple’s mobile payment and digital wallet service, has been very successful in the United States. However, Apple Pay has been struggling to tap into international markets due to technical problems, the lack of user adoption, and resistance from banks.

Starting from only 18 employees and a small B2B platform, Alibaba has become an e-commerce giant in China and already expanded into many other industries. But Alibaba has no plans to stop, Alibaba is now working on an even bigger ambition: to insert itself into ever part of our everyday lives.

On May 20th, Samsung Pay and Alipay announced their intention to merge their online payment businesses. Now, users can import their Alipay account into Samsung Pay and with just one swipe, users can enable Alipay’s QR code. The whole process can be completed within 2 seconds, even if your screen is locked. This is a huge step for Alipay, since the new user experience increases convenience and eliminates the normal steps of finding the app and waiting for it to load. Alipay’s new process drastically decreases the inconvenience of using the QR code as a payment method. But it begs the question, why would Samsung betray UnionPay to partner with Alipay?

Over the past few years, Alipay, WeChat, and other mobile financial and non-financial platforms have become ubiquitous in China. This ubiquity has led to a fiercely competitive market, so increasingly these companies have begun to look overseas, expanding into foreign markets including Japan, Korea, and Southeast Asia. Although they are tremendously successful domestically, China's large tech players face multiple challenges when expanding abroad including regulation, which has become a real challenge for Tencent in Thailand as of late. 

On May 27th, the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) released the implementation details that will govern foreign investment in China’s interbank bond market. The new rules make it much easier for certain foreign investors to participate in Chinese bond market activities, such as borrowing/lending, futures/forwards, and swaps, including interest rate agreements. 

The PBOC-backed 'Payments Clearing Association of China' published its annual report in May. We talked about some of the digital payments statistics from the report in our previous commentary, but the report also features ranking for China acquiring market, which is even more significant because such data has never been officially published before.

On May 6th, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) changed its policy for investors in the interbank bond market. These modified regulations will open up the market to new types of investors including asset managers, housing provident funds, pension funds and charities.

Friday, May 20th was the first day when foreign commercial banks were allowed to trade yuan on the recently opened inter-bank forex market. The first batch of the banks will be able to trade both spot RMB and derivatives.

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