Money 20/20 kicked off its inaugural Asia event in Singapore on Tuesday March 13. With a slew of keynotes diving into the fintech landscape, here are some of the highlights that caught my attention:
General remarks
Although the event caters to all tastes, I found the platform discussions to be particularly insightful.
Speaking of catering, the chicken satay served during afternoon tea was delicious.
Speaking of platforms: the value of Tencent’s investments now outpace its own market cap!
From BBVA’s Derek White
A bank’s business proposition should be centered around its clients’ needs, time and stress, or NTS as he calls it.
The battleground between technology companies and banks lies in interactions with clients where each one is an opportunity to strengthen or destroy client trust.
Cheng Li from Ant Financial
The company has a threefold digital security strategy: (1) an AI powered risk brain monitors data usage for abnormal patterns, (2) digital customer identity validation and (3) robust measures to protect against leaks.
James Llyod of EY on platforms
Payments is the underlying feature of most platforms.
It’s no surprise that messaging services are moving into financial services; it’s where we spend most of our time.
With numerous third parties offering their services on a platform, who assumes the liability risk when things inevitably go wrong?
Grace Yin from WeChat Pay
We're ubiquitous in China because we're more than just payments: we connect everyone and everything.
Anthony Tan from Grab
Grab is on one in seven smart phones in Southeast Asia.
The company is more than a ride hailing app and sees itself as supporting over five million micro-enterprises.
To this end, it announced the launch of a financial service arm focusing on payments, loyalty, a large agent network, loans and insurance products.
From a discussion among regulators
One of the reasons the FCA created the regulatory sandbox was due to a lack of startup funding. Venture capitalists weren’t comfortable with the grey zone fintech sat in.
It's overkill to regulate a small #fintech that's trying to solve a particular problem.
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