Breaking Banks Asia Pacific

Though Bitcoin is still deep in the valley of disillusion, innovators continue to find new ways to meet investor needs with Blockchain. In this episode we speak with two people at the frontline of capital markets, digital assets and disruption. Not yet breaking banks, but certainly keeping them on their toes. Guests: Angelina Kwan, Senior Adviser, IMC Asia Pacific Aaron Gwak, CEO and Co-founder, L...

StraitsX is the issuer of the world’s first Singapore Dollar stablecoin, XSGD, and XIDR, the StraitsX Indonesian Rupiah stablecoin, and is also a Major Payment Institution in Singapore, enabling account holders to manage payments as well as connect their accounts to digital asset platforms. Host Simon Spencer chats with co-founder Tianwei on how StraitsX was bor...

With Asian markets making the leap into open banking and open finance, there’s new talk of cross-border open banking and open finance. We sat down with opn payments and open banking experts Lauren Jones and Nilixa Devlukia at Money 20/20 Asia to discuss lessons for new markets considering open banking, use cases for cross-border open banking and the rails that need to be in place to tru...

Sometimes it takes out of the box thinking to get people to make the move from cash to digital money.  And if there is one person who has had to think deeply around this issue, it’s Jojo Malolos, currently the CEO of Philippines payment service PayMongo and before that founded digital bank GoTyme. But so many people start the journey at the easy bit, in the middle: how to get people who...

The team from Breaking Banks Asia meet forward thinkers to sum up last week’s Money 20/20 Asia conference with a focus on the investment outlook for startups and fintechs, the key themes coming out of the conference and how banks and their competitors are teaming up to innovate. Guests: – Scarlett Sieber, Chief Strategy and Growth Officer at Money20/20 – Dennis Pra...

In this second part of our series on cash, cards and digital wallets, we shift our focus to the challenges and opportunities of an entirely digital payments world and look to the innovation happening beyond consumer payments.  We start with the legacy of India’s controversial 2016 demonetisation program, explore the role of central banks in cutting back cash, and investigate the fu...

Debanking is a real problem for fintechs operating in Australia. Local companies and foreign intrants alike are not immune to a 30-minutes-to-midnight text saying “your accounts will be closed from tomorrow”.  Stuart Stoyan, founder of Moneyplace and former chair of Fintech Australia, is in no mood for making nice after five years of inaction from governments and regulators and fe...

In Part 1 of this two-part show we explore the resilience of cash for payments. From cards and digital wallets to superapps and digital currency, we ask the experts what’s the killer app to kill cash in Asia, and what would mass uptake of global digital payments mean for financial inclusion in our region. Guests: Anthony Thomas, MoMo Jason Bryce, Cash Welcome Brad Pragnell, 34 South 45 North...

There’s a story told by the World Bank that in 2009 more people in the Philippines had a mobile phone than a bank account – despite there still being some 450 rural banks alone in the country. Today, that story might be apocryphal and it also doesn’t mean Filipinos don’t have incredibly complex financial lives as GCash, employer loans, remittances, cash, and QR payments might all...

Regtech is the unloved tech cousin of the fintech world. It’s the one which follows the rules and makes sure everyone else does too. But in an industry where not following the rules leads to some of the most spectacular catastrophes in history, it’s no surprise that it’s a sector on the rise — how could it not be when it’s the darling of banking regulators?  Debo...

Banks replacing their core banking has been likened to ‘doing brain surgery with a spoon’ and there are plenty of public examples where the surgery partly or completely failed. Is Banking As A Service a new pathway for banks struggling with aging core banking platforms? We speak with Sachin Sharma, chief product and commercial officer at audax, the BAAS spinoff from Standard Chartered Venture...

 A bill to introduce a digital ID is making its way through the Australian Parliament to better protect government-based identities and stem the flow of consumer data from insecure vaults. Bank-based digital identity verifications systems are already operating and international companies are, with government blessings, setting up shop in the country.  But the true question will be can an...

2024 is shaping up as the Year of the e-CNY, but can China be trusted with a global reserve CBDC? Our last guest Richard Holden says no. Cashless author Richard Turrin offers a full-throated reply, saying the rise of the digital Yuan is a lack of trust in the US dollar and how the US uses its power.  We also discuss how formalised data markets will change how fintechs obtain and use data, and...

Host Charis Palmer sits down with economist Richard Holden to chat about his new book: Money in the 21st Century and why he believes the US Fed needs to get going with a ‘Fedcoin’, and the global economics of #crypto #cbdcs #mobilemoney and #cheapmoney and how we’ll all transact in our future cashless world. Produced by Rachel Williamson and Charis Palmer, with sound engineering...

The hosts and producers of Breaking Banks Asia and Breaking Banks Europe get together to swap stories at the world’s biggest fintech event. Plus interviews on the sidelines with DigiFT founder and former Citibank China Deputy CEO Henry Zhang, and Lito Viullanueva, Founding Chairman of the Fintech Alliance of the Philippines and Chief Innovation & Inclusion Officer at RCBC. Produced...

He’s the CEO of one of the world’s biggest banks, but has never been afraid of disrupting the mother ship with digital contenders. In Singapore recently for the fintech festival, we caught up with Standard Chartered CEO Bill Winters for a wide-ranging conversation on why he’s such a fan of fintechs, the bank’s support for digital assets, where AI is helping financial services firms, including his,...

Trust in banks in some markets in the Asia Pacific is at an all time low – so you’d think that would give fintechs and neobanks a red hot chance at stealing main bank customers – think again! In this episode we explore the nuance of trust in digital banking, the relationship between good tech and trust, and why gaining trust takes more than being always-on. In this panel show, we hear...

India is putting the legal building blocks in place that will create real domestic carbon markets, and it is opening the door for fintechs to begin playing a significant role in fixing the country’s environmental problems. But while the PayUs of India — the country’s largest payments provider — are getting on board by offering offsets at the point of sale, we were interested in companies and ideas...

The Australian government is in the middle of a review of AI use, fielding submissions in response to a paper it put out in June on government mechanisms to ensure AI is developed and used safely and responsibly.    While many of Australia’s Asian neighbours have taken a light touch approach to regulating AI, all eyes are currently on the EU, with EU governments aiming to reach agr...

There’s no doubt Gen Zs will change fintech as we know it, but the ones likely to have the most influence? Kids today in Asia.  Fintech ideas born in Asia are starting to influence trends around the world. That means the almost 1 billion children and young adults who count as Gen Z, and who were born into this exciting melting pot of ideas, are going to shape fintech around the wor...

There’s a whole movie coming out about the YOLO investing that really messed up some hedge funds and short sellers in 2021. Could we one day expect a movie (we’d even be ok with a made-for-streaming series) about the same kind of you-only-live-once, grassroots take down of… banking?  Dr Usman Chohan says that attitude is already here, with just as many get-rich-quick fireworks tha...

When does a fintech become what they set out to disrupt? Is it when they start offering bank-like products? Get a banking licence? Is it when they go all-in and buy an actual bank? In this episode we ask whether this is good, bad, or something else for competition. The Asian Banker founder Emmanuel Daniel says fintechs struggle to maintain their innovative edge when they get sucked into the bid to...

In 2021 Myanmar went through a series of shocks, beginning with a coup d’état in February when the military overthrew the government and ending with a bank run. Brad Jones, the founding CEO of smartphone-based fintech Wave Money, was in the thick of it, working through the Internet ban and supporting staff as well as he could through COVID-19.  With host Rachel Williamson, Brad discusse...

Once again it looks like the digital asset house is burning down, but in Asia the smoke is clearing — or so believes the Singapore-based digital asset team at Standard Chartered.  We talk to the bank’s global head of digital assets Rene Michau and the brand new head of digital assets and governance Danielle Szetho about where they see the opportunity for the big regulated banks, and th...

China continues to forge ahead with its central bank  digital currency, notching up millions of transactions through giveaways and lottos. But beyond the consumer headlines lies a long-term strategy that could disrupt both banks and international trade.  We speak with two experts, ‘Cashless’ author Richard Turrin and Singapore Management University professor and China economi...