Digital banks in Asia Pacific witnessed improving overall profitability in FY2019. Although some digital banks’ net profit in FY2020 has been affected by COVID-19 pandemic, their growth outlook remains optimistic.

Digital-only banks pose serious challenges to the traditional financial services industry with their entirely new banking experience. However, for most of them, licensing, scale and profitability are the three key issues they must face going forward.

WeBank of China, Ally Bank in the US, and the retail arm of ING Group, topped The Asian Banker's the inaugural global ranking of leading digital banks.

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.

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

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.

Consumers in India rated ICICI as the Most Recommended Retail Bank in the 2023 BankQuality™ Survey with a score of 69%, while Paytm scored 64% and rated as the Most Recommended Digital-Only Bank

The current disintermediation in payments and MSME lending marks the tip of the iceberg, and retail deposits may be the next battleground

The Indian central bank’s disciplinary action and consequent threat to Paytm Payments Bank’s licence is a lesson for the industry that growth and innovation cannot be at the cost of compliance