Technological disruption is reshaping the payment landscape, creating a tight mobile wallet business environment. Banks must reshape their strategies that will help enhance their competitiveness in this market.

Global mobile phone users are projected to reach 4.8 billion by 2025, compared with 2.8 billion users in 2020. Businesses are tapping into this vast market as mobile wallets gain an increasing share of the payments market.

The rapid transformation of domestic and cross-border payments brings new opportunities and challenges for financial institutions.Amid shrinking payment margins, players are rethinking their business models to better monetise data insights and integrate financing options such as “buy now, pay later” (BNPL). Industry experts share their views on the impact of this changing landscape, emerging value propositions, and key technology enablers for future growth

Tech giants, which make up some of the world’s largest companies, are muscling into traditional banking spaces. But whether they want to crush the traditional finance players or enable them, they are learning across the globe that disrupting well-regulated banking systems is easier said than done

The German fintech’s dramatic collapse is likely to reshape the payment processing landscape as market rewards players leading innovation and value creation

Several key themes emerged amidst the many discussions by global leaders in payments, including QR code, blockchain, credit card schemes, fintech and data consolidation

While the growth of Alibaba and Alipay as well as Tencent and WeChat pay in China is well known, there have been questions about whether a similar model can succeed outside of China. Local players as well as those Chinese giants themselves are starting to show that a super-app may well succeed in other markets in Asia too.

Given that remittances are so lucrative in so many markets in Asia, and that new competitors are offering faster and cheaper services, banks will need to develop new models if they want to keep their customers.

The most competitive digital retail financial institutions come all but from China, and the elite club of the top 10, representing all non-bank financial players, are exclusively from China, Korea and Australia

Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, joined the Asian Banker’s Emmanuel Daniel and Gordian Gaeta in a debate on the development of the internet, innovation in China, and what the financial industry can learn from both

Alipay emerges as the best platform, driven by its impressive performance in coverage, connectivity and ecosystem, while GCash excels in customer base, usage and engagement, and Wise scores on performance

Consumers chose Indonesia’s Bank Central Asia as the Most Recommended Retail Bank, and DBS Singapore as Most Selected Main Bank in APAC in the 2023 BankQuality Survey