Breaking Banks Asia – Provoke.fm Media: Recent Episodes
Simon Spencer
Breaking Banks Asia gets the inside look at the incredible innovation and technological changes that are setting the standard for the rest of the world. Led by host Simon Spencer, we talk to the people in across the Asia Pacific region about how their ideas came together, what innovations they are bringing fintech, and the shifts in customer behavior that are forecasting what will happen in the rest of the world.
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, Libeara
Produced by Charis Palmer, with sound engineering by Kevin Hirshorn. Music credit Raz Burg.
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 born, the future of money in a Web 3 world, and the role of stablecoins in real-time payments going beyond borders.
Hosted by Simon Spencer and produced by Charis Palmer, with sound engineering by Kevin Hirshorn.
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 truly empower consumers.
Guests:
Nilixa Devlukia is the Chair of the Open Finance Association and founder of Payments Solved, a regulatory consultancy advising on the regulatory framework for CBDC, crypto assets, open banking, and payment services. She’s a lawyer by training and has worked both on the banking side at Barclays, but also on the regulatory side at the Financial Conduct Authority, and other regulatory bodies.
Lauren Jones is SVP Global Advisory at UK-based open banking and tech company Konsentus. She was formally Head of Standards at Payments UK where she was responsible for the UK’s standards policy on behalf of banks, government, and the wider industry. So it’s no surprise she’s a self-proclaimed regulation geek
Produced by Charis Palmer, with sound engineering by Kevin Hirshorn.
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 already have money to use cards or digital wallets. Jojo starts at the much more difficult extreme, with people who are unbanked because they have no money at all.
We travel through the journey of providing a basic income to people so they have enough money to open a bank account, through to how to encourage people to take the leap from the under-mattress stash to digital money.Produced by Rachel Williamson and Charis Palmer, with sound engineering by Kevin Hirshorn.
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 Pratistha, Chief Investment Officer, Mandiri Capital Indonesia
– Tim Poskitt, Fintech Managing Director – APAC, Startupbootcamp
Produced by Rachel Williamson and Charis Palmer, with sound engineering by Kevin Hirshorn.
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 future of cross border payments, where things are heating up.
Guests:
Monica Jasuja, Ambassador, Emerging Payments Association Asia
Anthony Thomas, Non-executive Chairman, MoMo; MD, Fintech, Delivery Hero
Brad Pragnell, Principal, 34 South 45 North
Richard Holden, Professor of Economics, UNSW Business School
Produced by Charis Palmer and Rachel Williamson, with sound engineering by Kevin Hirshorn. Music credits to Raz Burg, Mahesh Vinayakram and BalloonPlanet.
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 feeling the humiliation himself of being told you can’t be trusted with your customers’ money, or data.
We discuss who’s been broken up with via text and ghosted, the chilling effect on doing business as a fintech in Australia, and Stoyan’s views on the real reasons why banks have had to be told by the top finance cop, “don’t be dicks”.
Produced by Rachel Williamson and Charis Palmer, with sound engineering by Kevin Hirshorn. Music credits to Raz Burg and BalloonPlanet.
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
Monica Jasuja, Emerging Payments Association Asia
Produced by Charis Palmer and Rachel Williamson with sound engineering by Kevin Hirshorn. Music credits to Charlie Ryan, Mahesh Vinayakram and BalloonPlanet.
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 be used for income within a single family.
Netbank cofounder and Philippines banking and fintech investor Gus Poston says organising and simplifying the complicated patchwork of Filipinos’ financial realities is one of the biggest fintech opportunities in the country.
Produced by Rachel Williamson and Charis Palmer, with sound engineering by Kevin Hirshorn. Music credits to Raz Burg and BalloonPlanet.
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?
Deborah Young is the CEO of the RegTech Association, and is responsible for shepherding the different arms of the sector into one direction. She says it’s growing at a rate of knots as trust and transparency become catch cries for regulators and consumers alike.
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 Ventures, on why the bank spun out a BAAS service, why he thinks banks should consider it, and the benefits BAAS offers for banks looking to reach a new customer base via embedded finance.
Produced by Rachel Williamson and Charis Palmer, with sound engineering by Kevin Hirshorn. Music credits to Raz Burg and BalloonPlanet.
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 anyone convince sceptical Australians that this isn’t the much-feared “national ID”? And will ideas like singling out First Nations people to link their Aboriginality to this ID just allow the same conservatives who tried to torch digital health records do the same with this?
We interview Endava consultant and payments expert David Marsh and ConnectID managing director Andrew Black about the future design of an Australian digital identity system, why interoperability is needed for this not to be a failure, and what is required to convince Australians that this is not the Orwellian dystopia they fear.
Produced by Rachel Williamson and Charis Palmer, with sound engineering by Kevin Hirshorn. Music credits to Raz Burg and BalloonPlanet.
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 how 2024 will be the year when Chinese fintech products and services will continue their slow global expansion.
Produced by Rachel Williamson and Charis Palmer, with sound engineering by Kevin Hirshorn. Music credits to Raz Burg and BalloonPlanet.
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 by Kevin Hirshorn. Music credits to Raz Burg and BalloonPlanet.
Few people in the Australian market have the breadth of Telecom and Financial services experience as Rocky Scopelliti, who has spent much of his career looking deeply at the intersection between financial services and the telecom industries. Of particular interest to Rocky has been the rise of the Millennial customer: who are they, how they are different, and why they are an important element in the 'Perfect Storm' that is transforming Financial Services across Asia and around the globe.
In my interview we discuss the emergence of open banking and open ecosystems, we invent a new buzzword ‘Business Fabrics’ to describe the mashup of API’s, machine learning with a touch of Blockchain tossed in for good measure. We touch on some of the most innovative Fintechs and Larger enterprises from across the region including acknowledgements to #AntFinancial, #Tencent #AliPay #Optus #Suncorp #ANZ and more.
Produced by Rachel Morrissey, Senior Producer, Provoke Media
Few people in the Australian market have the breadth of Telecom and Financial services experience as Rocky Scopelliti, who has spent much of his career looking deeply at the intersection between financial services and the telecom industries. Of particular interest to Rocky has been the rise of the Millennial customer: who are they, how they are different, and why they are an important element in the 'Perfect Storm' that is transforming Financial Services across Asia and around the globe. In my interview we discuss the emergence of open banking and open ecosystems, we invent a new buzzword ‘Business Fabrics’ to describe the mashup of API’s, machine learning with a touch of Blockchain tossed in for good measure. We touch on some of the most innovative Fintechs and Larger enterprises from across the region including acknowledgements to #AntFinancial, #Tencent #AliPay #Optus #Suncorp #ANZ and more. Produced by Rachel Morrissey, Senior Producer, Provoke Media
The Victorian government has established not one, but two FinTech Hubs to help support establishment of the next wave of successful FinTech Ventures. This week I speak with Alan Tsen, Victorian GM of Stone and Chalk who have been chartered by the Victorian Government to launch one of the two Victorian FinTech Hubs We discuss the hub, what the next 3, 6 and 12 months are likely to look like, the catalysts, changes and opportunities to create in Australia, and specifically in Melbourne, something unique as a platform for successful FinTech innovation across Asia. Over a couple of beers we also talk about the ecosystem, go beyond the Sydney/Melbourne narrative, discuss what is working and who we are watching, the cultural dynamics and what each of us expect to see in 2018, a year when the perfect storm of FinTech Disruption, AI, Blockchain, OpenBanking a Royal commission and new regulations all collide! #RegTech. #StoneAndChalk #blockchain #Incubator #VentureCapital #Victoria #Culture #Diversity #ecosystem #PerfectStorm #Beers Produced by Rachel Morrissey, Senior Producer, Provoke Media
The Victorian government has established not one, but two FinTech Hubs to help support establishment of the next wave of successful FinTech Ventures. This week I speak with Alan Tsen, Victorian GM of Stone and Chalk who have been chartered by the Victorian Government to launch one of the two Victorian FinTech Hubs
We discuss the hub, what the next 3, 6 and 12 months are likely to look like, the catalysts, changes and opportunities to create in Australia, and specifically in Melbourne, something unique as a platform for successful FinTech innovation across Asia.
Over a couple of beers we also talk about the ecosystem, go beyond the Sydney/Melbourne narrative, discuss what is working and who we are watching, the cultural dynamics and what each of us expect to see in 2018, a year when the perfect storm of FinTech Disruption, AI, Blockchain, OpenBanking a Royal commission and new regulations all collide!
RegTech. #StoneAndChalk #blockchain #Incubator #VentureCapital #Victoria #Culture #Diversity #ecosystem #PerfectStorm #Beers
Produced by Rachel Morrissey, Senior Producer, Provoke Media
When Asher Tan became interested in bitcoin, the best way to be involved was to start a company based on bitcoin. So he did. He began Coinjar in 2013. Now 5 years later, bitcoin is on every tongue in the cultural and economic landscape. Lately, with prices shooting through the roof and then falling again, everyone wants a prognosis on boom or bust. Asher believes it is still the early days, and that bitcoin’s real value hasn’t been tapped into yet. Asher Tan Co-Founder/CEO - @ashertn Asher has a background in economics, formerly providing analysis to leading business magazines on company financial performance and the wider economy. He leads CoinJar - a successful AngelCube alumnus and Australia’s favourite bitcoin company. Produced by Rachel Morrissey, Senior Producer, Provoke Media
When Asher Tan became interested in bitcoin, the best way to be involved was to start a company based on bitcoin. So he did. He began Coinjar in 2013. Now 5 years later, bitcoin is on every tongue in the cultural and economic landscape.
Lately, with prices shooting through the roof and then falling again, everyone wants a prognosis on boom or bust. Asher believes it is still the early days, and that bitcoin’s real value hasn’t been tapped into yet.
Asher Tan Co-Founder/CEO - @ashertn Asher has a background in economics, formerly providing analysis to leading business magazines on company financial performance and the wider economy.
He leads CoinJar - a successful AngelCube alumnus and Australia’s favourite bitcoin company.
Produced by Rachel Morrissey, Senior Producer, Provoke Media
As head of emerging technologies at Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Dilan Rajasingham is building a mesh economy. A mesh economy is about the convergence of new technologies; Artificial Intelligence will interact with the Internet of Things, and we will have an economy where the convergence of technologies will be machines talking to machines without human intervention.
Dilan sees the bank of the future as an enabler of that economy of convergence, but also we have to safeguard our humanity and talk now about the ethical implications of our technological choices. Unless we are conscientious, and we look at how these technologies layer, then we could create convergence that doesn't lead to improvements as AI becomes more prevalent in our lives. When quantum computing is layered under IOT under AI under voice interface, then we will have a mesh economy because we will have a world built on a mesh of technologies.
But Dilan also sees that AI and IOT give us unprecedented opportunities to make life better. The help of voice assistants in running our homes is a more natural haptic than any other interface. Technology will be embedded into our worklives, homes, and bodies. Eventually, we may interact simply through our thoughts.
Bio: Senior Executive, Banker and practical futurist with deep understanding of emerging technologies such as IoT, Blockchain, AI, Quantum Computing and AR/VR. Converting technology into operational efficiencies and incremental and future revenue.
Created cross-industry, and ecosystem partnerships, 10+ years working with Executive Committees in Global 500 companies; and 20+ years in banking, consulting and technology.
Extensive business and technology transformation experience with billion dollar programs of work.
Trusted presenter and media spokesperson – widely covered in conferences, radio, video, print, paper and online.
Published White Papers on my favourite topics - disruptive technology and their implications to business and society.
Produced by Rachel Morrissey, Senior Producer, Provoke Media
As head of emerging technologies at Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Dilan Rajasingham is building a mesh economy. A mesh economy is about the convergence of new technologies; Artificial Intelligence will interact with the Internet of Things, and we will have an economy where the convergence of technologies will be machines talking to machines without human intervention. Dilan sees the bank of the future as an enabler of that economy of convergence, but also we have to safeguard our humanity and talk now about the ethical implications of our technological choices. Unless we are conscientious, and we look at how these technologies layer, then we could create convergence that doesn't lead to improvements as AI becomes more prevalent in our lives. When quantum computing is layered under IOT under AI under voice interface, then we will have a mesh economy because we will have a world built on a mesh of technologies. But Dilan also sees that AI and IOT give us unprecedented opportunities to make life better. The help of voice assistants in running our homes is a more natural haptic than any other interface. Technology will be embedded into our worklives, homes, and bodies. Eventually, we may interact simply through our thoughts. Bio: Senior Executive, Banker and practical futurist with deep understanding of emerging technologies such as IoT, Blockchain, AI, Quantum Computing and AR/VR. Converting technology into operational efficiencies and incremental and future revenue. Created cross-industry, and ecosystem partnerships, 10+ years working with Executive Committees in Global 500 companies; and 20+ years in banking, consulting and technology. Extensive business and technology transformation experience with billion dollar programs of work. Trusted presenter and media spokesperson – widely covered in conferences, radio, video, print, paper and online. Published White Papers on my favourite topics - disruptive technology and their implications to business and society. Produced by Rachel Morrissey, Senior Producer, Provoke Media
George Lawson's role at Ant Financial is to grow Alipay's ability to pay for goods and services in Australia. Alipay, for those that don't know, is a lifestyle app with 520 million subscribers. That's right- 520 million. In China, it is almost difficult to get around without the app. It is so ingrained as part of the lifestyle that it is used to pay for everything. When people go to the market, the first thing they do is open Alipay. While some would call it a payments app, that is only a fraction of what it does. It is used throughout every financial transaction, from cabs and bike rentals, to knowing where the best deal is, to paying for dinner.
11/11, also known as Singles Day, is the equivalent of Black Friday in the US, but much much bigger. Last year, Ali Pay processed $18 Billion USD on Singles Day. This year, Ali Pay processed $7 Billion USD in the first 30 minutes.
Originally conceived as an escrow service, Alipay has exploded until it is completely integrated into the modern China. It has built a network of trust among customers and merchants that enables commerce, frictionless payment, and frictionless information.
Alipay is a modern day behemoth, modeling the changes that are coming to consumer behavior, the payments industry, and global movement of money.
Produced by Rachel Morrissey, Senior Producer, Provoke Media
George Lawson's role at Ant Financial is to grow Alipay's ability to pay for goods and services in Australia. Alipay, for those that don't know, is a lifestyle app with 520 million subscribers. That's right- 520 million. In China, it is almost difficult to get around without the app. It is so ingrained as part of the lifestyle that it is used to pay for everything. When people go to the market, the first thing they do is open Alipay. While some would call it a payments app, that is only a fraction of what it does. It is used throughout every financial transaction, from cabs and bike rentals, to knowing where the best deal is, to paying for dinner. 11/11, also known as Singles Day, is the equivalent of Black Friday in the US, but much much bigger. Last year, Ali Pay processed $18 Billion USD on Singles Day. This year, Ali Pay processed $7 Billion USD in the first 30 minutes. Originally conceived as an escrow service, Alipay has exploded until it is completely integrated into the modern China. It has built a network of trust among customers and merchants that enables commerce, frictionless payment, and frictionless information. Alipay is a modern day behemoth, modeling the changes that are coming to consumer behavior, the payments industry, and global movement of money. Produced by Rachel Morrissey, Senior Producer, Provoke Media