A global perspective on FinTech innovation through a Southeast Asian lens.
Let’s face it. We, the people of the United States, tend to look at the rest of the world and its economies from one perspective: our own, especially in an election year. Yet our decisions in finance, technology, and regulation have global consequences for the future of money and the technologies that manage it.
To get a global view of FinTech developments and the future of money, I turned to Emmanuel Daniel. He founded The Asian Banker in 1996. TAB provides intelligence reports on the financial services industry in the Asia Pacific, Middle East, and other emerging market regions. His book The Great Transition: The Personalization of Finance is Here came out last year. Trained as a lawyer, Emmanuel graduated from the National University of Singapore and the University of London. He has also been cited for entrepreneurial and journalistic excellence.
I met Emmanuel in Amsterdam at the 2010 Sibos transaction banking conference, where the innovation focus was mobile payments. We met one another in person at Money20/20 Asia in 2018 when blockchain technology and bitcoin were high on the innovation agenda. Now, the media focus is on the state of FinTech investment, especially mergers and acquisitions. Our conversation covered:
- Platform plays versus banking and credit plays and how investors are beginning to change their focus.
- Measures of FinTech business success.
- The importance of foreign exchange revenue to payments FinTechs.
- The power of regulators and large financial institutions to shape innovation in finance to support traditional financial institutions.
- Continuing U.S. dominance as the global reserve currency.
Emmanuel’s PR firm contacted me upon the release of technology research firm CB Insights’s Q2 2024 FinTech Trends report. We talked on July 24, 2024 and started our conversation with that.
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