Author: Izzat Najmi Abdullah

It is a very unfortunate week to talk about speed, but Coinbase had quite the week. First, the crypto exchange told employees it was cutting about 14% of its workforce as part of a plan to become “faster and more AI-native”. CEO Brian Armstrong said AI had changed how work gets done, with engineers now shipping in days what used to take teams weeks, while non-technical teams were also beginning to ship production code. Then, just days later, Coinbase went offline for around seven hours. You do not need to be Einstein to see the comedy in that. To be…

Database infrastructure has rarely been the most visible part of Asia’s fintech boom, but it is increasingly becoming one of the most consequential. For much of the past decade, the industry’s attention has sat mostly on the customer-facing layer, as consumers grew more comfortable managing money through digital channels and financial institutions raced to make everyday transactions feel faster and less visible. That front-end progress is now placing heavier demands on the systems underneath it. As digital finance becomes more deeply woven into daily life, the infrastructure behind transactions, account balances, reconciliations, fraud checks and customer activity has to do…

What is stopping businesses from fully tapping a US$336 billion cross-border payments opportunity? Ask the merchants trying to sell beyond their home markets, and the answer often comes back to infrastructure. They would say that payments may look simple at the point of sale, but the work behind it is not. They grow heavier with every new corridor. Each market adds another layer of work behind the payment itself, and those hidden demands can narrow margins long before a business reaches meaningful scale. Kozen Tan, CEO, Singapore of LianLian Global, sees the consequences of this fragmentation firsthand, particularly as businesses…

Digital banking in Southeast Asia was once built on speed. For quite some time, they held on to the formula of launch first, refine later, and it did work, especially during their early stages when their volumes were much lower, and regulators were still patching and adapting to digital models. But the stale recipe seems to show cracks as these banking institutions grow, particularly when artificial intelligence moves from experimentation into their core operations. That pressure is especially visible in larger ASEAN markets such as Indonesia and the Philippines, where things such as digital wallets and QR payments are becoming…

MariBank Singapore Private Limited and its subsidiary reported total assets of S$4.23 billion in FY2025, as the Group pushed deeper into lending and recorded sharp growth in deposits, loans and income. The consolidated results include MariBank Philippines, Inc. (A Rural Bank), which was listed as the Group’s subsidiary in the audited accounts. The balance sheet grew at speed, supported by higher customer deposit balances and a much larger loan book, while income rose as more assets were deployed into interest-earning activities. The pace of expansion also brought a heavier risk bill, with credit loss allowances rising sharply as lending accelerated.…

Digital payments have become more of a routine for most Malaysians.  You can use it to clear tolls, parking, meals and even use it to pay your bills. The transaction completes almost instantaneously.  It is so seamless that almost all of the users do not even think about the technology enabling those moments. TNG eWallet started as a digital payment solution for everyday transactions, particularly offline QR payments across transport, retail and small merchants.  Today, it has evolved into a broader financial and lifestyle platform that integrates payments, financial services and everyday services within a single app, operating at a…

Stablecoins have spent the past few years building momentum on the edges of finance, powering crypto trading, remittances, and a growing range of Web3 use cases. The industry is now entering a new phase that looks less like a parallel system and more like an extension of existing infrastructure. A Thredd report, in collaboration with Reap and Fireblocks, points to this shift already taking shape. Payment providers are integrating stablecoins into card infrastructure, allowing users to spend them like fiat within familiar payment experiences. Rather than replacing existing systems, the market is steadily merging new settlement rails with established payment…

It is a surprising disconnect when it is reported that more than 85% of banks are already deploying some form of AI, and yet most initiatives still struggle to move beyond the pilot stage. A recent MIT study only reinforces that gap when it suggests that as many as 95% of generative AI pilots fail to deliver measurable value, while Gartner has warned that over 40% of these projects could fail by 2027. AI may be everywhere in banking conversations, but tangible impact remains harder to pin down. For Cynthia Siantar, General Manager of Singapore and Hong Kong, Head of…

Discussions about the future of banking often revolve around digital channels, cloud migration and mobile apps. At Mobile World Congress 2026 in Barcelona, Huawei placed the spotlight on what comes next. During its Digital Finance session, the company gathered financial institutions and technology partners to discuss how artificial intelligence is beginning to reshape the foundations of modern banking. The event carried the theme “Powering Resilient Intelligence, Co-creating Finance Future” and served as the backdrop for Huawei to introduce upgrades to its Banking AI and Foundation Model Solutions aimed at supporting the next phase of industry transformation. Attention quickly turned to…

Digital assets were designed around decentralisation, yet the responsibility for securing them increasingly sits with institutions. Banks, fintechs, and specialised platforms now safeguard billions of dollars in cryptocurrencies, stablecoins, and tokenised assets on behalf of customers. As digital asset markets mature, conversation is shifting from innovation to infrastructure, and, more importantly, security. Yet the biggest risks rarely originate from the blockchain itself. Most major breaches stem not from flaws in blockchain protocols but from the surrounding infrastructure, particularly the systems responsible for managing private keys. Recent data illustrate the scale of the problem. According to Chainalysis, more than US$2.2 billion…

Twitter Co-Founder and current CEO of Block, Jack Dorsey, just announced in his 600-word+ X post that Block would cut roughly 4,000 roles, close to 40% of its workforce, reportedly, all because of none other than artificial intelligence. In his post, Jack pointed to rapid advances in artificial intelligence and the company’s push to “functionalise” its structure.  He said: “We’re already seeing that the intelligence tools we’re creating and using, paired with smaller and flatter teams, are enabling a new way of working which fundamentally changes what it means to build and run a company.” Though the company’s stock appeared…

In the first half of 2025, I took a glance at KPMG’s Pulse of Fintech, which at that time read like the sector was taking a breather. What I meant by that is that investment across Asia Pacific had slowed sharply, valuations were adjusting, and investors were pulling back after years of aggressive deployment. Six months later, the tone has shifted, although only ever so slightly. Just like the H1 report, the Pulse of Fintech H2 2025 update does not point to a broad-based recovery, nor does it suggest the return of easy money. What it does show is a…

Small and medium enterprises sit at the core of Asia Pacific’s economic engine, yet they remain among the most underserved segments in formal finance. Across the region, SMEs account for more than 97% of all businesses and contribute up to 53% of national GDP in some markets, according to the Asian Development Bank’s 2024 SME Monitor. But why did we mention that SMEs are among the most overlooked sectors in formal finance in the same sentence when they are the driver for the region’s economy? Well, despite their economic importance, access to credit remains constrained. Mastercard estimated in 2024 that…

Asia is no longer simply following global payment trends. Across India, Southeast Asia, and other fast-growing digital economies, local payment rails, instalment models, stablecoins, and AI-driven commerce are increasingly shaping how online transactions work, and they are often ahead of mature markets. That is one of the central conclusions of EBANX’s Beyond Borders 2026 study, which analyses how payment behaviour in high-growth digital markets is redefining global commerce models. According to Sean Yu, Vice President of Commercial APAC at EBANX, Asia has moved beyond adoption to innovation, becoming an early testing ground for future global payment architectures. “The core takeaway…

At first glance, gaming and payments do not always feel like natural companions. One is driven by storytelling, competition and immersion. The other is supposed to be invisible, something users only notice when it fails. Yet at Singapore Fintech Festival, the conversation between Juan Pablo Ortega, CEO and Co-Founder of Yuno, and Livia Ang, Global Business Development Director at NetEase Games, made one thing clear. Few industries expose the strengths and weaknesses of payment infrastructure as quickly, or as brutally, as gaming. For global game publishers, payments are no longer a back-office function. They sit directly on the front line…

When something goes wrong inside an organisation, the instinct is usually to ask a simple question. Who approved this? That question has anchored corporate accountability for decades as decisions were made by people, systems executed them, and responsibility could usually be traced back to a role, a team, or a signature. Even as automation expanded, that basic logic held. But Agentic AI somewhat unsettles it. As AI systems gain the ability to plan, decide, and take actions across enterprise systems, the familiar lines of responsibility, as always, begin to blur. These systems can now trigger transactions, interact with other systems,…

We are currently living in a time where digital finance conversations are dominated by wallets, apps, and these so-called “invisible transactions”. Something that is so seamless, we hardly see or feel it. But these immaculate processes made it so easy for us to forget that most payments still end the same way, most of the time. A customer stands in front of a merchant. A screen is turned. A card, phone, or QR code comes out. Then only will the process be completed. The interaction lasts just seconds, but little did we know that it often defines how the entire…

Five years ago, digital banking was one of the most talked-about developments, especially within the financial sector across Asia. New licences were being issued across Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Hong Kong, and beyond. Regulators spoke about innovation and inclusion. Founders spoke about disruption. Investors spoke about scale. To sum up as a whole, the picture looks far more nuanced. Some digital banks have found their footing and are scaling steadily. Others are facing struggles, with some unlucky ones having pivoted and even quietly faded from the spotlight. Looking at this current state of what’s happening around these digital banks, it…

Thailand is marching toward a cashless society. With mobile wallet adoption expected to reach 63% in 2025 and the prepaid card and e-wallet market projected to grow, the country stands as a digital payments leader in Southeast Asia. Backed by government stimulus, booming e-commerce, and a digitally savvy population, Thailand’s e-wallet ecosystem is maturing rapidly. From bank-backed apps to fintech-led super apps, the market is being shaped by innovation, integration, and rising user expectations. Here’s a closer look at the current landscape and the five best e-wallet platforms dominating the Thai market in 2025. Between 2020 and 2024, Thailand’s prepaid…

Efforts to modernise cross-border payments have accelerated over the past decade, yet retail transactions remain slower, more expensive, and less transparent than domestic instant payments. While many jurisdictions have rolled out real-time payment systems, sending money across borders continues to rely on fragmented foreign exchange processes, prefunding arrangements, and sequential settlement mechanisms that introduce cost and risk. Project Rialto, a collaborative experiment led by the BIS Innovation Hub together with the Bank of France, the Bank of Italy, Bank Negara Malaysia, and the Monetary Authority of Singapore, explores how these frictions could be addressed without dismantling existing payment infrastructures. The…