Broadridge is bringing tokenised securities into the same infrastructure institutional firms use for traditional assets. The company has expanded its tokenisation capabilities across order, execution and post-trade workflows. The new capabilities build on Broadridge’s Distributed Ledger Repo platform, which tokenises more than US$365 billion in transactions daily. Its wider capital markets infrastructure supports more than US$15 trillion in assets per day. Broadridge has extended the tokenisation engine behind its repo platform to equities, funds, alternatives and money market instruments. Tokenised and Traditional Assets on One Platform Broadridge’s post-trade infrastructure will now support tokenised and traditional assets within the same processing ecosystem. Firms can process tokenised securities, fractionalised assets and crypto-related holdings alongside conventional instruments using the same workflows, controls, reconciliation and reporting standards. The platform also connects to major public and permissioned Layer 1 blockchain networks, including Canton, Ethereum and EVM-compatible networks. Broadridge’s CQG and NYFIX capabilities will support crypto and tokenised asset trading through front-end trading access, order routing and institutional connectivity. Broadridge is also extending corporate actions and governance services to tokenised securities, including dividend processing, corporate actions, proxy voting and on-chain governance for tokenised equities. Frank Troise Frank Troise, President of Broadridge’s Global Capital Markets business, said, “Bringing together digital innovation with proven trading, connectivity, and post-trade infrastructure will enable our clients to unlock liquidity and reduce friction across their operations while maintaining the scale, operational resilience, and regulatory compliance required in global capital markets.”     Featured image: Edited by Fintech News Singapore, based on image by noob via Magnific The post Broadridge Brings Tokenised Securities Into Its Institutional Trading Infrastructure appeared first on Fintech Singapore.

Travellers from Nepal can now make QR payments across Sri Lanka by using selected domestic payment apps at LankaQR merchants. The service allows users from Nepal to make QR payments at more than 400,000 LankaQR merchants, reducing the need for cash or currency exchange. The launch was announced at an event in Colombo attended by officials from Nepal Rastra Bank, the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, Nepal Clearing House Ltd., LankaPay and participating banks and financial institutions from both countries. Laxmi Sunrise Bank is enabling the service in the first phase as the issuing bank. Its dollar cards and instruments can be linked to the connectIPS app for QR payments in Sri Lanka. Other mobile banking apps in Nepal are expected to be added later. The payment link connects the national payment infrastructures of Nepal and Sri Lanka and supports real-time QR transactions through regulated systems. The initiative is expected to support tourism and business travel between the two countries, while giving LankaQR merchants, including SMEs, access to more cross-border customers. It also adds to wider efforts in South Asia to improve digital payment interoperability.     The post Nepal and Sri Lanka Launch QR Payment Link for Travellers appeared first on Fintech Singapore.

Former KPMG Singapore Managing Partner Ong Pang Thye will join the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) Board as the regulator updates its board composition. MAS announced that Ong will serve a three-year term from 1 June 2026 to 31 May 2029. Ong is currently Vice Chairman of the Singapore Business Federation and sits on the boards of Temasek, Singapore Power Limited and MOH Holdings. He was previously Managing Partner at KPMG Singapore. MAS also confirmed the reappointment of four existing directors, including Gan Kim Yong as Chairman and Chia Der Jiun as Managing Director. Gan, who is Singapore’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Trade and Industry, will serve another three-year term as Chairman of the MAS Board from 1 June 2026 to 31 May 2029. Chia will continue as Managing Director of MAS and a member of the MAS Board for a further two years, from 1 June 2026 to 31 May 2028. Lucien Wong, Singapore’s Attorney-General, will serve another three-year term on the MAS Board. Chaly Mah, Chairman of NetLink NBN Management, will be reappointed for a final one-year term from 1 June 2026 to 31 May 2027. He will also continue as Chairman of the Audit Committee for the same period. Gan Kim Yong Gan Kim Yong, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister for Trade and Industry, and Chairman of MAS said, “We welcome Mr Ong Pang Thye to the MAS Board of Directors. His experience in accounting and consulting work in a broad range of industries will be valuable to the MAS Board as we navigate an increasingly complex and turbulent world.”     Featured image: Edited by Fintech News Singapore, based on image by ismode via Magnific The post Former KPMG Singapore Managing Partner Ong Pang Thye Joins MAS Board appeared first on Fintech Singapore.

Risk and compliance departments across the Asia-Pacific (APAC) have spent years tackling financial crime as isolated hurdles, a strategy completely upended by the escalating and growing fraud trends in 2026. Most, if not all, often treat each threat as a separate challenge that was divided across departments. Something like when document forgery is sat with onboarding teams, while suspicious cross-border transfers fall under anti-money laundering units. But such a siloed defence strategy does make sense, especially when attackers were largely opportunistic, and the threats themselves were as disconnected as the institutions. In the year 2026, however, trends show that criminal syndicates in APAC treat fraud as more of an integrated business process, and they are often more coherent. What it means is that the moment a synthetic identity bypasses a digital bank’s initial filters, it tends to trigger a deliberate chain of events designed to facilitate scams across multiple jurisdictions. And detection in most cases comes only when the stolen funds have already begun moving across borders, which is mostly pointless at this stage, leaving institutions not enough time to do anything. Thus, traditional checkpoint-based security models now struggle to keep pace with modern syndicates because their underlying architecture targeted those exact isolated vulnerabilities. And such old systems lack the dynamic capacity required to track the continuous criminal supply chains driving today’s financial crime. Like a Bomb, Fraud Can Also Cause a Chain Reaction Sumsub’s latest regional analysis pointed out that the scale of that transformation, as now, biometric circumvention, particularly cases where a selfie fails to match submitted identification, accounts for 35.4% of all fraudulent activity across Asia-Pacific. That figure marks a 73% year-on-year increase, underscoring how quickly legacy fraud controls are losing ground. Much of that acceleration reflects a broader shift in attacker capability, as criminals move beyond crude document manipulation and increasingly rely on AI-generated imagery built to bypass verification systems designed for far simpler threats. The same technological shift is also fuelling a surge in synthetic identities, which have grown 142% over the past year and now represent 15.7% of all recorded incidents. Syndicates achieve this scale by meticulously blending stolen factual data with fabricated details, constructing hybrid personas designed to survive initial onboarding checks. The operational danger typically surfaces weeks or months later, when these dormant accounts suddenly begin moving funds in ways that diverge sharply from their established profile. Persistent probing has also slowly become a defining feature of how modern fraud operates. Duplicate application submissions have surged by 388% globally, revealing how attackers increasingly treat failed attempts as diagnostic intelligence to reverse-engineer an institution’s verification logic. Now, rather than the norm of retreating after rejection, criminals refine their methods and return repeatedly until they successfully exploit the vulnerability. Source: Sumsub APAC Fraud in 2026 Fabrication Is Replacing Forgery, Discreetly and at Scale The fundamental nature of digital deception has also completely transformed, abandoning the primitive theft or alteration of legitimate credentials. Fraud in the not-so-olden days is oftentimes centred on themes of stealing or altering legitimate credentials. But modern fraud these days is different. It, for the moment, focuses increasingly on fabrication. Criminals now try to overcome that by constructing synthetic identities from scratch, using deepfakes and staged interactions to mimic legitimate users with growing sophistication. As a result, compliance teams just cannot rely solely on spotting obvious document tampering or visual inconsistencies. Detection now depends on identifying subtle behavioural and biometric anomalies that are hidden within otherwise convincing applications. Yet, successfully bypassing those digital checkpoints is rarely the final goal for these threat actors. While artificial intelligence provides the technical entry point to slip past an institution’s automated defences, the resulting large-scale financial harm almost always hinges on targeted social engineering. Syndicates ultimately wield these polished, digitally fabricated personas to systematically exploit human psychology, proving that trust remains the most lucrative and vulnerable target in the entire financial ecosystem. In 2026, Fraud Shows Itself Most Clearly in the Trends People in APAC Recognise Romance scams reflect this clearly as Sumsub reports that fraudulent actors account for 6.3% of all activity in the dating sector, often spending weeks or months building trust before introducing financial requests. Recent data points to a 37% annual rise in stolen funds linked to romance scams, highlighting how emotional manipulation continues to scale alongside technological sophistication. In Hong Kong, for instance, just within two weeks during November 2025, police recorded more than 40 romance scam cases with combined losses exceeding US$2.17 million (HK$17 million), many involving older victims targeted through highly personalised deception. Operating at such a massive scale requires criminal syndicates to completely industrialise the art of deception. Handlers rely heavily on meticulously scripted psychological manipulation, often reinforced by synthetic media, to manufacture intimacy on demand. That very foundation of manufactured trust serves as the launchpad for infinitely more complex operations, most notably the ‘pig butchering’ syndicates that are also currently sweeping the region. Multi-layered campaigns, like what Ponzi schemes usually do, merge intimate emotional grooming with fake trading portals, gradually steering targets into entirely fabricated financial ecosystems. They routinely authorise small early and easy withdrawals and display consistent portfolio growth that blinds their victims into the illusion of legitimacy. And the trap remains open, expertly maintained, until they drain all of the victim’s money. But maintaining that level of personalised, daily deception across thousands of concurrent targets requires industrial-scale manpower. Authorities within the region have been tracking the resulting billion-dollar capital flight, continually tracing the digital footprint back to massive, highly structured compounds across Southeast Asia. The grim reality behind the polished applications is an assembly line of deceit, operated almost entirely by trafficked individuals working under severe coercion. The Typologies of Fraud as per Sumsub. Source: Sumsub APAC Fraud in 2026 Once the Money Moves, It Rarely Stays Still Maximising extraction, however, is rarely where these operations end. Once they successfully compromise their victims, these criminal networks then shift their focus toward moving and concealing stolen assets before meaningful intervention can occur. At that stage, the distinction between fraud, scams, and money laundering becomes far less clear. What may begin as identity manipulation or social engineering often evolves into a broader financial operation, where illicit proceeds are quietly channelled through layered systems designed to obscure their origin. Sumsub’s report highlights how these once-distinct threats are increasingly bleeding into one another, forming a continuous chain rather than isolated criminal acts. Mule networks play a central role in that process, helping syndicates push stolen funds rapidly beyond immediate recovery. Funds are typically broken apart, shifted through overlapping accounts, and redirected across multiple jurisdictions in ways that make tracing considerably more difficult. Viewed in isolation, unusual transfers or account behaviour may appear manageable. Yet when examined as part of a larger pattern, they reveal an increasingly sophisticated laundering infrastructure. That complexity places enormous pressure on financial institutions, many of which only ever encounter one segment of a much broader criminal framework. A payment processor may identify suspicious transfer activity, while the institution responsible for account creation may never see the wider fraud narrative unfolding around it. Fragmented visibility creates precisely the type of institutional weakness that organised criminal systems increasingly rely upon. Defending Against a System Requires Acting Like One Criminal networks now operate with a level of coordination that has outpaced many traditional institutional defences. Static checkpoints and siloed compliance functions are proving increasingly inadequate against fraud ecosystems that move fluidly across identity, payments, and laundering channels. As synthetic identities grow more sophisticated and cross-border fund movement becomes faster, continuous monitoring and integrated fraud intelligence are becoming far more essential. Explore the full scale of transformation and some of the trends in greater detail in Sumsub’s APAC Fraud 2026 report. Download it here: Featured image: Edited by Fintech News Singapore based on an image by coding3637 via Freepik. The post Different Trends Are Emerging in 2026 as Fraud in APAC Grows To Be More Systemic appeared first on Fintech Singapore.

It is a very unfortunate week to talk about speed, but Coinbase had quite the week. First, the crypto exchange told employees it was cutting about 14% of its workforce as part of a plan to become “faster and more AI-native”. CEO Brian Armstrong said AI had changed how work gets done, with engineers now shipping in days what used to take teams weeks, while non-technical teams were also beginning to ship production code. Then, just days later, Coinbase went offline for around seven hours. You do not need to be Einstein to see the comedy in that. To be clear, Coinbase said the disruption was not linked some internal AI experiment gone wrong. So no, this is not a neat story where Coinbase reduced headcount, handed the keys to AI and immediately paid the price. That would be too convenient, and probably wrong. But the timing? The timing did half the article for us. The AI-Native Memo Meets Reality Armstrong’s memo was written in the familiar language of modern tech restructuring. Coinbase needed to reduce layers, move faster, automate more work and put AI closer to the centre of how the company operates. The company also said it was operating in a “weaker crypto market” and needed to “adjust its cost structure”, which is not especially surprising. Crypto is cyclical, and Coinbase has been through several rounds of adjustment before. But when you strip away the polished wording, Coinbase’s message was basically, “AI lets fewer people do more, so why do we need more people?” There may be some truth to that in certain areas. Microsoft Research found that developers using GitHub Copilot completed a controlled coding task 55.8% faster than those without it, while McKinsey has found that generative AI can speed up certain software development tasks, especially documentation and code generation. AI can help humans in some cases mostly by making internal workflows less painful. And nobody is calling AI as just a hype. The problem, however, begins when AI becomes a neat explanation for cutting human capacity, especially in businesses where operational resilience matters. Moving fast sounds convincing in a memo, but it sounds less convincing during an outage, especially when customers simply want the platform to just work. When Lean Starts Looking Thin The Coinbase outage was more than a minor inconvenience because trading disruptions hit differently on a crypto exchange. Timing matters, and crypto markets do not pause politely while a cloud provider cools down. Once users cannot transact, uptime quickly turns into a trust issue. People can forgive an outage. Maybe. But they for sure are less likely to be generous when it lands right after a company talks about cutting hundreds of roles, just because AI can make teams more productive. At that time, one must wonder whether “lean and fast” sounds slightly different when the platform is unavailable. Coinbase pointed to an AWS-related issue. Reuters reported that a temperature spike at a Northern Virginia data centre disrupted Coinbase’s services, forcing AWS to bring additional cooling capacity online before it could safely restore the systems. That makes it unfair to blame Coinbase’s layoffs for the outage. Customers, however, do not usually care which layer of the stack overheated. They opened Coinbase, trusted Coinbase and experienced the outage through Coinbase, which means the pressure still lands on the company even when the problem starts elsewhere. Someone still has to respond and troubleshoot, while reassuring users and making sure the disruption does not spiral into a bigger reputational mess. That work is not as exciting as AI-native pods or one-person teams, and it rarely gets celebrated in a CEO memo. But in financial services, the boring operational layer is often what separates a manageable incident from a trust problem. The AI Layoff Story Is Getting Harder to Sell AI has become a very convenient way for tech and fintech companies to talk about smaller teams without making it sound like ordinary cost-cutting, and Coinbase is hardly the only one leaning on that language. Block had its own version of this story, with Jack Dorsey saying the company would cut thousands of roles while pointing to AI, efficiency and a need to make the business more functional. Block had also grown aggressively during the pandemic, so the story was never as simple as “AI came in, people went out,” even if the headline made it easy to read that way. Many of these announcements can make AI sound like a clean solution where fewer people somehow means faster work and better execution. It sounds tidy on paper, though real life has a habit of making things less tidy. Klarna showed how complicated this can become. The company had promoted its AI assistant as doing the work of around 700 customer service agents, only to later acknowledge that service quality still needed human support in some situations. So yes, AI could handle a lot, but apparently not everything customers actually needed. Coinbase’s outage then landed right in the middle of this wider debate. Reports tied the incident to AWS, which makes the obvious punchline tempting but not entirely fair. Still, a seven-hour outage will naturally raise questions when it follows so closely after Coinbase told everyone it wanted to become leaner, faster and more AI-native. There is no denying that AI can help companies move faster, but when something breaks, customers don’t necessarily look for an AI-native operating model. They look for someone to fix the problem. Be Careful With What You Optimise For None of this means companies should avoid AI. That would be silly. But AI should not become a magic word that makes every headcount cut sound visionary. Becoming more efficient is not the same as becoming thinner, and moving faster is not much use if a company loses the depth it needs when things go wrong. Coinbase may still become the lean, fast, AI-native company their CEO, Brian Armstrong, described. But for one very awkward day, it looked more like a company that had just told everyone it was built for speed, only to be reminded that the future can still overheat in a data centre. And honestly? You cannot write better timing than that. Featured image: Edited by Fintech News Singapore based on images by pvproductions and ilin_sergey via Magnific and TechCrunch via Wikimedia Commons. The post Coinbase Wanted to Be Lean and AI-Native. Then It Went Offline. appeared first on Fintech Singapore.

HSBC Singapore has added priority medical access, health screening and longevity services to its Premier proposition. The new privileges are available to HSBC Premier clients through partnerships with IHH Healthcare Singapore, IHH’s regional network and Raffles Medical Group. The move reflects growing demand among affluent clients in Singapore for proactive health, wellness and longevity support. HSBC said it has seen a 35% increase over the past five years in the number of customers making health-related transactions on its credit cards. The privileges include a 24/7 IHH health concierge service for medical enquiries, initial assessments, specialist referrals, appointment bookings, hospital admissions, second-opinion recommendations and medical evacuation. Clients can also access tailored HSBC health screening packages and rates across IHH clinics, as well as the Parkway Shenton Health app, which offers personalised health plans, human health coaches and a 24/7 AI health assistant. For longevity services, HSBC Premier clients will have access to R17, Raffles Medical Group’s MediWellness facility, which provides personalised programmes based on health profiles, risk factors and life goals. Ashmita Acharya Ashmita Acharya, Head of International Wealth and Premier Banking, Singapore, HSBC, said, “Our clients are increasingly taking a more holistic view of wealth, looking beyond financial outcomes to ‘live’ their wealth through health, wellness and longevity. Our new privileges support this shift by offering clients access to a comprehensive and dedicated suite of health and wellness services under a single integrated banking proposition, strengthened by our international network and partnerships in Singapore and across Asia.” The launch builds on HSBC’s efforts to expand its Premier offering in Singapore, including added travel, entertainment and lifestyle benefits, a wider wealth centre network and its first dedicated Premier Elite space in the country.     Featured image: Edited by Fintech News Singapore, based on image by freepik via Magnific The post HSBC Premier Singapore Adds Health Concierge, Longevity Services appeared first on Fintech Singapore.

Aspire has refreshed its startup programme with new fundraising support, AI testing tools and incentives to help early-stage founders stretch their runway. The updated Aspire for Startups programme is available to founders in Singapore, Hong Kong and the United States. The programme includes priority onboarding within three to five days, dedicated startup specialists and Aspire Ignite, which supports startups raising Seed and Series A funding. Aspire is also introducing an AI sandbox to help founders test and refine products in a live environment, along with support for startups looking to scale in the United States. Eligible founders can also access Shortcut to YC, an initiative that helps startups refine their Y Combinator applications. Aspire’s founders are Y Combinator alumni from the W18 batch. The programme also includes FoundersXchange, a peer community that connects founders through online and offline platforms, as well as access to operators and investors. Cash Incentives and Partner Perks Added Eligible startups can receive up to US$1,500 in cash bonuses after opening an account and making a deposit. They can also receive 10% cashback on up to US$8,000 in AI spend or credits during the first three months. Other benefits include more than US$500,000 in partner perks, including offers from Google Workspace, Slack Pro, AWS, Notion, Xero and HubSpot. Startups can also access AspireOS for free, pay no management fees for Aspire Yield, and receive 30% off Employer of Record services for the first six months. Asad Kalimi Asad Kalimi, VP of Partnerships and Sales at Aspire, said, “Building and scaling a business requires a thriving ecosystem. At Aspire, we want to support startups on their journey with dedicated rewards, resources, investors, and a community of peers who have been in the trenches. By combining cash and partner rewards with white-glove financial support, we are ensuring that founders spend less on tools and more on the growth that matters.”     Featured image: Edited by Fintech News Singapore, based on image by Frolopiaton Palm via Magnific The post Aspire Refreshes Startup Programme With AI Tools, Funding Support appeared first on Fintech Singapore.

Circle raised US$222 million through an ARC token presale for Arc, its new institutional Layer 1 blockchain, giving the network a US$3 billion fully diluted valuation. The presale drew backing from investors including a16z crypto, BlackRock, ARK Invest, Apollo Funds and Standard Chartered Ventures. Circle also published the ARC Token whitepaper, which outlines how the token could support governance, security and network operations on Arc. USDC Growth Lifts Revenue Circle reported total revenue and reserve income of US$694 million in the first quarter of 2026, up 20% year-on-year. Revenue less distribution costs rose 24% to US$287 million, while adjusted EBITDA increased 24% to US$151 million. Net income from continuing operations fell 15% to US$55 million, as higher stock-based compensation and investment costs offset revenue growth. USDC in circulation reached US$77.0 billion at quarter end, up 28% from a year earlier, while USDC onchain transaction volume climbed 263% to US$21.5 trillion. Circle Builds Out Agent and Payments Tools Circle also introduced Circle CLI, Agent Wallets and Agent Marketplace to support agent-driven activity in USDC across blockchains and payment protocols. In April, the company launched Managed Payments, which allows financial institutions to offer stablecoin payments without directly managing digital assets. Jeremy Allaire Jeremy Allaire, Co-founder, CEO and Chairman of Circle, said, “Circle’s first quarter reflected strong execution against a much bigger opportunity: the rapid convergence of AI platforms and economic operating systems into a new internet stack. With the ARC token presale, momentum behind the Arc network, and the launch of our Agent Stack, we are building trusted infrastructure for AI-native economic activity and a more programmable internet financial system.” For 2026, Circle expects other revenue of US$150 million to US$170 million, revenue less distribution costs margin of 38% to 40%, and adjusted operating expenses of US$570 million to US$585 million.     Featured image: Edited by Fintech News Singapore, based on image by freepik via Magnific The post Circle Raises US$222 Million for Arc Blockchain at US$3 Billion Network Valuation appeared first on Fintech Singapore.

Wise has started trading on Nasdaq as the payments company looks to deepen its presence in the US market. The company will maintain its secondary listing on the London Stock Exchange, where its shares trade on the Main Market. For the financial year ended 31 March 2026, Wise reported cross-border volume of US$243 billion, up 31% year-on-year. Customer holdings rose 40% to US$39 billion, including US$9 billion in Wise Assets holdings. Transaction revenue increased 22% to US$1.9 billion. This included US$1.3 billion in cross-border revenue and US$600 million from card and other revenue, which rose 34% year-on-year. Card spend reached US$44 billion, up 37% year-on-year. Net revenue rose 19% to US$2.5 billion, including US$800 million in interest income on customer balances and US$200 million in interest expense on customer liabilities. Kristo Käärmann Kristo Käärmann, Co-founder and CEO at Wise, said, “In the last financial year, we helped nearly 19 million people and businesses, including banks like Morgan Stanley and Standard Chartered, move over $243 billion across borders instantly and at a fraction of the cost of traditional providers, saving our customers more than $3.3 billion in fees. Still, with $43 trillion moved across borders each year globally, we’re only getting started. People and businesses around the world are estimated to be losing over $250 billion in hidden fees each year — including here in the US where that figure is expected to hit $43 billion in 2026. We believe our US listing will help us accelerate our mission, helping to bring more of Wise to everyone in the US, as customers and as owners.” Wise already serves millions of American consumers and businesses through Wise Account, Wise Business and Wise Platform. The company plans to expand its local presence and reach more US banks, online platforms and customers making cross-border transactions. Wise is also introducing OwnWise, a programme offering customer loyalty benefits to eligible customers who hold Wise shares. The company supports payments across more than 40 currencies. Wise said 75% of payments made through Wise arrive instantly, in less than 20 seconds, while 96% arrive within 24 hours.     Featured image: Edited by Fintech News Singapore, based on screen grab via Nasdaq The post Wise Starts Trading on Nasdaq With US Growth in Focus appeared first on Fintech Singapore.

Database infrastructure has rarely been the most visible part of Asia’s fintech boom, but it is increasingly becoming one of the most consequential. For much of the past decade, the industry’s attention has sat mostly on the customer-facing layer, as consumers grew more comfortable managing money through digital channels and financial institutions raced to make everyday transactions feel faster and less visible. That front-end progress is now placing heavier demands on the systems underneath it. As digital finance becomes more deeply woven into daily life, the infrastructure behind transactions, account balances, reconciliations, fraud checks and customer activity has to do more than process data quickly. It has to remain stable during traffic spikes, meet rising compliance expectations, control long-term costs and adapt across markets where regulation, cloud preferences and customer behaviour can vary widely. OceanBase CEO Evan Yang sees that pressure building across Asia, particularly in Southeast Asia, where digital payments have moved from early adoption into mass usage. Evan Yang “Digitalisation has become fully widespread, and digital payments have become a basic necessity,” he said. That shift is pushing banks and fintech companies to revisit infrastructure choices that once seemed sufficient. Systems built for a slower financial environment are now being tested by higher transaction volumes, hybrid cloud strategies, stricter regulatory expectations and the growing need to make data available for real-time decision-making and AI tasks. Evan sees the shift as a change in how financial institutions should think about their core systems. He believes that database infrastructure is becoming part of the strategic foundation, because the same system that stores and processes data is now expected to keep pace with heavier transaction loads, recover from disruption, satisfy local regulatory demands, support expansion across markets, and seamlessly integrate with the AI era. OceanBase’s Global Push Has Moved Closer to the Ground As fintech companies and banks place more weight on the systems behind daily financial activity, OceanBase is exploring how it brings its database technology into international markets. Their CEO described the company’s development as a shift from an earlier phase tied closely to Ant Group’s fintech ecosystem into a more comprehensive global strategy built around localisation. That earlier phase gave OceanBase a route into international markets, helped it test its technology with early customers and showed how differently financial institutions operate across Southeast Asia. Localisation has since become a more deliberate part of its international strategy. Evan also said that global growth requires more than taking one product into every country, because each market brings different regulations, customer habits, cloud environments and partner ecosystems. “Globalisation isn’t about offering a single set of products and services worldwide, but rather creating region-specific solutions tailored to different markets,” he pointed out. OceanBase has anchored that approach through its international headquarters in Singapore and an international support centre in Kuala Lumpur, with local teams covering all sorts of areas. And the set-up brings the company closer to the customers that it wants to serve, which matters in financial services because banks and payment companies assess infrastructure providers on more than just product capability. Evan reduces those requirements to one word: trust. That view gives OceanBase’s expansion wider relevance because financial institutions may want more advanced database infrastructure technology. However, they might also need confidence that the systems can operate safely inside regulated and market-specific environments. Fintechs and Banks Are Reworking the Core The need for trust grows as Asia’s digital finance market scales, with fintech companies and banks across the region facing new infrastructure demands as digital payments become mainstream and older core systems struggle with today’s transaction volumes. Cloud-native and hybrid deployment models are gaining ground, while cost pressure is making expensive legacy architectures harder to justify. The strain is especially visible among e-wallets and payment companies, where rapid user growth can turn any outage or failed transaction into a customer, merchant and platform issue. OceanBase says it now serves more than 4,000 customers worldwide across fintech, banking, manufacturing and retail. In fintech, the company works with more than 100 clients, including over 20 e-wallets such as Malaysia’s TNG Digital, the Philippines’ GCash, Indonesia’s DANA, and Pakistan’s easypaisa and Africa’s PalmPay and OPay. For platforms operating at that size, database performance becomes part of the financial service itself. An e-wallet with tens of millions of users depends on infrastructure that can keep balances accurate and payments moving even during heavy demand. OceanBase cites TNG Digital, Malaysia’s largest e-wallet, as one example. According to the company, TNG Digital has used its database infrastructure to support zero-downtime system updates, peak transaction volumes of 40,000 transactions per second and 26 million users, covering around 85% of Malaysia’s adult population. The company also points to PalmPay, where it said core accounting database costs fell by 86% after the African fintech integrated OceanBase, while its user base grew into the tens of millions. Digital financial platforms need to grow without letting infrastructure costs and reliability risks rise at the same pace. A database that works at one stage of scale can quickly become a constraint once transaction volume, customer numbers and regulatory demands increase together. It is for this reason that OceanBase is increasingly emerging as a preferred database solution. Cloud Flexibility Is Becoming a Practical Requirement Cloud strategy is now part of the same infrastructure question, especially as financial institutions operate across cloud platforms, private infrastructure and hybrid systems. Compliance rules and internal risk policies often mean sensitive workloads cannot simply be moved into one environment, which makes flexibility more important. Evan said cloud fragmentation remains one of the major challenges in international markets. Customers across regions may use AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, Alibaba Cloud or other platforms, making compatibility harder for traditional databases. OceanBase’s response has been a multi-cloud-native architecture that supports seven major global cloud platforms across 16 countries and regions, more than 60 cloud regions and over 240 availability zones. “This ‘develop once, deploy across multiple clouds’ capability enables customers to avoid repeatedly adapting their applications to different cloud environments,” Evan said. Fintechs and banks can use that flexibility when entering new markets, modernising older systems or managing cross-border continuity without weakening data consistency. The company also points to international certifications and compliance standards, including PCI DSS, AICPA SOC, ISO 27001 and ISO 27701, as well as compliance with GDPR-related requirements, which matter as financial service providers face higher expectations in regulated environments. Evan Yang said that his company’s cloud product, OB Cloud, supports real-time synchronisation across cloud regions, with disaster recovery standards reaching an RPO of 0 and an RTO of less than 8 seconds. Financial institutions are looking for systems that can preserve continuity when something goes wrong, rather than recover only after disruption has already caused damage. Database Infrastructure Is Becoming a Business Decision The same pressure is pushing database infrastructure closer to business strategy. Evan said fintechs and banks need stronger foundations that can keep services available as usage grows, while avoiding the cost and complexity that often come with older technology stacks. Companies are also looking for “a single technology stack” that can handle transaction processing, analytical processing and AI. That matters because data now carries a heavier role inside financial institutions. Core systems still have to process transactions reliably, while analytics teams need fresher information to understand how customers and risks are changing. AI raises the stakes further because production use cases depend on governed data environments that can operate safely inside real financial workflows. Many banks and fintech firms have tested AI for years, although fragmented data architecture still makes production deployment difficult. Information often sits across separate systems, creating delay and duplication. Those weaknesses become harder to ignore when institutions start using AI for fraud detection or real-time decisioning, where poor data quality can limit how far the technology can go. Partners and Open Source Help Build Local Trust The same logic behind localisation also shapes OceanBase’s partner strategy. Evan said the company combines local partners with global technology, with trained service partners supporting database migration, operations and maintenance alongside a global 24/7 after-sales team. OceanBase says it has attracted dozens of partners across Southeast Asia, Japan, and China’s Hong Kong SAR and Macao SAR, covering sales, services and solution architecture. That local layer matters when customers are running mission-critical systems, where remote support alone may not be enough. Open source adds another layer to that trust. Evan said the developer community is central to OceanBase’s global strategy, with the company committed to long-term open-sourcing of its core code and providing documentation and tools that developers can use, deploy and customise. “Companies nowadays highly value open, vendor-neutral technology architectures,” Evan said. Financial institutions are often cautious about vendor lock-in, especially when technology sits close to core operations. Open source gives customers more visibility and allows developers and partners to adapt tools to local needs, which supports OceanBase’s wider push to build a more grounded ecosystem across its international markets. Asia’s Infrastructure Race Is Entering a New Phase The first wave of digital finance growth was judged mainly by adoption, as user numbers and transaction volumes became the easiest signs of progress. Sustaining that growth now requires stronger infrastructure, especially as financial institutions face more pressure to keep systems reliable at a greater scale. OceanBase is positioning itself around that shift through localisation, multi-cloud flexibility, partner-led implementation and open source, while actively pioneering AI database technologies to drive the next wave of industry evolution. Its longer-term challenge will be proving that those pieces can translate into trust across different markets. What comes after adoption may depend less on the apps customers see, and more on the data infrastructure that keeps those services running as the market becomes larger, more regulated and more technically demanding. Featured image: Edited by Fintech News Singapore based on an image by Louis H. via Magnific. The post OceanBase CEO: Asia’s Fintech Growth Demands a Smarter, Unified Data Foundation appeared first on Fintech Singapore.

Digital wealth platform Syfe is rolling out a new feature allowing users to co-manage investment portfolios and build shared wealth. The product is currently live for an early-access group, with a full public launch expected in the coming weeks. The launch of Syfe joint accounts in Singapore targets what the platform describes as a “coordination gap” in retail wealth management. According to a recent company survey, more than 40% of respondents currently invest separately and struggle to coordinate their finances manually. Furthermore, the survey revealed that a single person manages all investments in 30% of households. This setup often leads to reduced transparency and unequal financial literacy between partners. When asked if couples should have full visibility into shared investments, 62% of respondents agreed. Syfe’s shared accounts allow two individuals to track performance, contribute funds, and make withdrawals within a single app interface. Users can also switch between their individual and shared portfolios seamlessly. Unlike traditional banking setups, the wealthtech platform does not impose minimum balance requirements or require users to hold accredited investor status. Customers can set up specific portfolios tailored to shared goals, such as buying a home or funding a child’s education. Company data indicates a shift in how retail investors view shared finances. While traditional joint bank accounts are often associated with paying daily expenses, 55% of Syfe’s surveyed users cited building long-term family wealth as their primary motivation. Additionally, one in three respondents plan to use the shared accounts to save for their children or facilitate intergenerational wealth transfer. Jack Prickett “Investing as a family shouldn’t feel like a second job,” said Jack Prickett, Chief Commercial Officer at Syfe. He noted that the platform aims to provide the necessary digital infrastructure to remove friction, allowing couples and families to shift towards growth-oriented portfolios.     Featured image credit: Edited by Fintech News Singapore, based on image by naskawin888 via Magnific The post Syfe Launches Joint Accounts to Boost Shared Wealth Building in Singapore appeared first on Fintech Singapore.

Vietnamese merchant management platform SoBanHang has raised at least US$3.8 million in a pre-Series A round to expand its digital services for micro-enterprises across the region, according to regulatory filings and a report by DealStreetAsia. The round was anchored by Malaysia’s Hong Leong Bank, which invested US$2 million, while OSK-SBI Venture Partners contributed US$1.5 million. Existing backers FEBE Ventures and Antler also participated, filings with Singapore’s Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority showed. Sources told DealStreetAsia that the fundraising is still ongoing. The latest financing comes three years after SoBanHang raised US$4 million in seed funding in 2021 across two tranches. Founded in mid-2021 by brothers Hai Long Bui and Hai Nam Bui, Finan developed SoBanHang to help family-run and micro businesses manage sales, operations, and customer transactions via smartphones. The funding follows a recent strategic partnership between Shinhan Bank Vietnam and Finan, which launched Shinhan Store, an integrated platform combining banking services with merchant management tools. The initiative aims to address Vietnam’s fragmented small-business ecosystem, where many merchants still rely on manual bookkeeping or multiple standalone apps, limiting efficiency and access to formal credit. Through Shinhan Store, merchants can manage sales, track revenue, handle inventory, and issue electronic invoices while also opening bank accounts and applying for loans within the same application. Banks and fintech players are increasingly targeting Vietnam’s underserved micro-business segment, which remains large but highly under-digitised, as competition intensifies around embedded financial services.     Featured image credit: Edited by Fintech News Singapore, based on image by freepik via Magnific The post Vietnam’s SoBanHang Raises US$3.8M Pre-Series A to Expand Micro-Business Tools appeared first on Fintech Singapore.

What does the digital assets market look like to someone who’s seen money move from within some of the world’s largest traditional financial institutions and from one of crypto’s most recognised infrastructure companies? For Kirit Bhatia, Chief Digital Assets Officer at Banking Circle, this is the unique vantage point he brings into his role. Before joining Banking Circle in late 2025, Bhatia spent years across JPMorgan Chase, RBS, and Ripple, moving between the old and new worlds of financial infrastructure. He’s now applying that experience at Banking Circle, a fully licensed bank with central bank clearing rails that processes EUR1+ trillion in annual payment volumes across 24 currencies. Banking Circle already sits inside the institutional payments flow, serving 750+ financial institutions, payment companies and marketplaces that need money to move across borders quickly, reliably and under regulatory scrutiny. That makes Bhatia’s role less about watching the digital asset market evolve from the sidelines, and more about asking how regulated institutions can bring digital asset solutions to market with the trust, security and regulatory layer of a bank. For Bhatia, the digital assets question is tied to how regulated institutions can use new rails without sacrificing the trust, compliance, and operational discipline that banking depends on. His background carries weight at a time when stablecoins and digital assets are being tested against a harder question. Can these rails operate inside regulated financial services, solve customer pain points and improve parts of the banking system that have remained slow, costly, and fragmented for years? Bhatia’s seen where traditional banking is resilient, where it remains constrained, and where newer digital asset infrastructure may have a credible role to play. Kirit Bhatia “I end up in this unique position where I appreciate how traditional banking works and also how new technology works,” he said during an exclusive interview with Fintech News Network on the stablecoins in banking. For Bhatia, the work begins by stepping back to look at the bigger picture. “I have to start at the 30,000-foot level and think about where the landscape is. What technology innovations are happening in financial services? What’s the direction of travel? Where’s regulation at, and importantly, what are the pain points the customer and the market are feeling?” Stablecoins Are Having Their Infrastructure Moment Stablecoins have quickly moved from being discussed as a future disruption to entering a more crucial phase. How will it be embedded into regulated financial services, with the controls, permissions, and operating standards institutions require? “We’re living through the shaping of that reality right now,” he said. “It’s sometimes hard to appreciate that when you’re in it and actually shaping it.” Stablecoin’s trajectory is no longer a subject of dispute. Total stablecoin transaction volumes crossed US$33 trillion in 2025, and in February 2026, monthly stablecoin volumes overtook the Automated Clearing House network for the first time. Yet volume is just one part of the story. Stablecoins are moving in the same conversation as banking rails, treasury flows, settlement infrastructure, and cross-border payments. The market is now seeking to know whether regulated institutions can use it reliably and at scale. That is where Banking Circle’s position becomes relevant. Banking Circle, for one, operates an internal ledger on which client-to-client fiat transfers settle 24/7 instantly, removing some of the T+1 and T+2 lags that have traditionally defined correspondent banking. Bhatia sees digital asset settlement as an extension of that infrastructure. In April 2026, Banking Circle launched stablecoin settlement services following its Crypto-Asset Service Provider (CASP) licence approval, with direct integration between fiat currencies and USDC, USDG and EURI through its core platform. The proposition is faster settlement inside a regulated banking environment. “Whether it’s traditional fiat or digital assets, the compliance integrity is the foundation that a bank like us sits on. It’s a non-negotiable. It’s our permission to operate,” he said. The principles, he shares, do not change between fiat and digital asset rails. The tooling does. On-chain AML screening, travel rule compliance, custody technology, and the regulatory permissions themselves (e.g. CASP in Europe and the Digital Payment Token framework in Singapore) all require new systems and skill sets. Banking Circle, he said, has spent the last couple of months embedding those capabilities into its core banking platform. “At the Banking Circle, we’re fortunate that we’ve already built new tooling and new systems over the last 18 months, and embedded these key pieces of infrastructure into our core banking platform. We will continue to add more and more as we bring more solutions to the market.” Should Banks Fear Stablecoins, Or Fear Standing Still? If stablecoins are settling into the centre of wholesale payments, the next question is what that means for the banks they touch. In the 2026 Global Outlook for Banking and Financial Markets IBM report, a survey of 500 financial services executives sketched out the risks plainly. According to IBM, if major corporations respond by issuing their own stablecoins, a scenario 42% of executives see as likely, banks could see transaction fees evaporate, deposits bases shrink, and customer data slip away. To stay in the game, banks might need to evolve into full-service providers for tokenized operations. 63% of corporate banking executives see the provision of tokenised services as their primary role in the future. Bhatia does not dismiss any of this, but is certainly wary of letting fear set the frame. “Fear-based framings are never helpful,” he said. “Big technology breakthroughs have always generated healthy doses of fear of bad outcomes.” He draws the parallel with the early internet, when most of the disruption anxieties were genuine, but never the full picture. The internet did displace old models, yes. It also built new economies, new jobs, and new opportunities on top of them. Stablecoins and digital assets sit in similar territory for him. The lesson to learn here is that no financial institution can afford to stand still. “Whether you’re a bank or any type of business, constant adoption, adaptation and evolving is just a requirement. You can’t stand still.” Bhatia said that the industry still has work to do alongside regulators on managing the unintended consequences of digital asset adoption. But the direction of travel, according to him, is settled. Any technology that lowers cost, supports 24/7 global settlement, removes cut-off times, and makes commerce more efficient deserves a serious look. For Banking Circle, that vision lands on a hybrid model. “We see the future of banking as hybrid and interoperable, where our customers have the option to transact on the best rail that is available in the market,” he said. “Whether that’s traditional fiat or whether that’s tokenised fiat, that’s okay.” Who’s Accountable When Agents Start Paying with Stablecoins? The next frontier for stablecoins may involve autonomous systems. According to the Cambridge Tokenized Money Report, AI integration is an emerging but largely underdeveloped area in the intersection of tokenized money with AI and autonomous systems. Early indicators include Google’s announcement of Agent to Payment (A2P) capabilities supporting stablecoins for autonomous agent transactions. This raises the bigger question for the industry: what happens when bots, agents or autonomous systems begin initiating payments? Bhatia sees this space as important in growth, but it is still nascent. “Agents and payments are obviously a hot topic right now,” he said. “Everyone’s jumping on it.” Still, he is careful not to describe it as a near-term unlock. To him, agentic payments today resembles where crypto was almost a decade ago: full of experimentation, attention, and possibilities, but still far from the point where market demand, regulation, infrastructure and operating models have properly converged. “It feels very much like eight years ago, where crypto was,” he said. “It was an innovation. Lots of people were talking about it, but to actually bring it to life, to where we are today, it has taken almost a decade.” At a practical level, Bhatia said Banking Circle is not yet seeing direct customer demand for bot-initiated payments. “We don’t have any customers asking us to process payments for their bots.” The second issue he points out is more fundamental: what is the legal and regulatory status of the agent itself? If an autonomous system initiates, routes or executes a stablecoin payment, the industry still needs to determine who is responsible for the action. Bhatia compares it to autonomous taxis. Experimentation is useful, and the technology may be promising, but the real test comes when something goes wrong. In payments, these could range from an erroneous transaction to a fraud event or a dispute over authorisation. “Ultimately, when things go wrong, who is accountable?” That may be the biggest hurdle for agentic payments. It needs an accountability model that regulators, banks, payment firms and customers can trust. Until then, autonomous stablecoin payments will remain an intriguing frontier. Kirit Bhatia is scheduled to speak at Money20/20 Europe 2026 on two topics: “How Far Will Stablecoins Go on Public Blockchains?” and “Part 1: The Future of Global Money Movement.” Featured image edited by Fintech News Singapore based on image by mrsiraphol on Magnific The post Stablecoins Have Won the Volume Game. Now Comes the Harder Part. appeared first on Fintech Singapore.

Yuno has partnered with digital payment institution Triple-A to enable stablecoin payment acceptance for its global merchant network. Through a single API integration, Yuno allows businesses to process stablecoin transactions alongside traditional fiat payment methods. The setup uses Triple-A’s regulated infrastructure, meaning merchants can receive digital currency payments without holding or managing the assets themselves. Triple-A holds a Major Payment Institution license from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), as well as regulatory approvals in the USand Europe. The company currently supports more than 1,000 enterprise customers to process digital payments. Juan Pablo Ortega “Across industries like SaaS, gaming, e-commerce, travel, and the creator economy, businesses are serving increasingly global customer bases who expect more flexible ways to pay,” said Juan Pablo Ortega, CEO and Founder of Yuno. Ortega added that the integration ensures businesses can meet consumer demands easily while simplifying cross-border payments to drive growth. Stablecoins are gaining traction as a settlement tool for cross-border commerce, particularly in markets with limited card infrastructure or high foreign exchange friction. The joint solution aims to improve conversion rates at checkout while offering faster settlement times compared to correspondent banking rails. Eric Barbier “Stablecoins are quickly becoming a foundational part of modern payment infrastructure,” said Eric Barbier, Founder and CEO of Triple-A. “With our regulated framework and Yuno’s global platform, we are making it simple for businesses to accept digital currencies in a secure, compliant way.” The partnership follows Yuno’s recent expansion in the APAC region, which included opening a regional headquarters in Singapore.     Featured image credit: Edited by Fintech News Singapore, based on image by mrsiraphol via Magnific The post Yuno Taps Triple-A to Bring Stablecoin Payments to Merchants appeared first on Fintech Singapore.

Singapore is advancing legislative amendments to establish an SGX Nasdaq dual listing framework aimed at improving the competitiveness of its domestic equities market. The Securities and Futures (Amendment) Bill was introduced at its Second Reading on Thursday (May 7), according to a speech published by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) delivered by Chee Hong Tat, Minister for National Development and Deputy Chairman of MAS. The Bill sets up a regulatory framework to support dual listing arrangements, including the new Global Listing Board. The framework allows issuers to access capital across both markets through a single prospectus and harmonised regulatory requirements. Chee Hong Tat “We are creating new pathways for issuers to access deeper pools of international capital while broadening investors’ access to new opportunities,” Chee said. The framework allows MAS to align selected regulatory requirements between Singapore and eligible overseas exchanges that meet international standards. For the Global Listing Board, MAS identifies the United States as a qualifying jurisdiction. Key areas of alignment include prospectus disclosures, listing timelines, and post-listing market practices. MAS will also have the power to adopt certain US safe harbour provisions for market conduct, while continuing to retain enforcement authority over any offences occurring in Singapore. Beyond dual listings, the Bill introduces broader measures to streamline the public offering process. Issuers can engage retail investors based on preliminary prospectuses to gauge demand, and authorities have clarified the rules for Depositary Receipt offerings. The reforms form part of ongoing changes to Singapore’s capital markets framework, ensuring the local ecosystem remains attractive for regional fintech and tech companies seeking international capital.     Featured image credit: Edited by Fintech News Singapore, based on image by ZKang123 via Wikipedia and brilian via Magnific The post Singapore Pushes SGX Nasdaq Dual Listing Bill to Ease Cross-Border IPOs appeared first on Fintech Singapore.

For decades, the world’s financial system has been running on a robust yet highly intricate infrastructure. Payment rails, settlement systems, regulatory and governance frameworks, and trading infrastructure are all moving parts of the same grid. Together, they enable financial value to move, be held, and be settled across borders, institutions and asset classes. A new layer is now being integrated into that grid by banks and non-banks alike for digital assets. Crucially, as McKinsey notes in its A New Era of Fintech report, “the (digital) assets gaining most attention are those that behave, monetise, and integrate like financial infrastructure.” Against this backdrop, the Financial Grid Fireblocks report offers a global view of where digital asset development stands today, drawing on an expansive 2026 survey of 600+ decision-makers across financial institutions and corporations, including those on digital asset infrastructure in the Asia Pacific. APAC Leads in Digital Asset Infrastructure Spending The survey indicates a regional divergence in how financial institutions are approaching digital assets. In the Asia Pacific, financial institutions are way ahead in digital asset adoption, with a pathway that is distinctly different, too. 62% of APAC institutions have already committed budgets for digital asset infrastructure, a number that eclipses North America’s 27%. To put it plainly, for every North American bank putting real money behind digital asset infrastructure, more than two APAC banks are doing the same. Spending appetite is also more advanced, with nearly eight in 10 APAC institutions allocating more than US$1 million. The regional modal sits between US$1 and US$5 million. Amy Zhang, Head of APAC at digital asset infrastructure provider Fireblocks, shared, Amy Zhang “What stands out most from the data is the combination of speed and conviction. APAC institutions aren’t just exploring: 36% are already in external pilots with clients, more than double the global average (20%).” That commitment seems to imply that the region’s next wave of production deployments could be larger than anywhere else in the world. Also, unlike North America, where regulatory clarity remains a key precondition or Europe, where MiCA is increasingly shaping the build agenda, APAC institutions appear to be responding more directly to local market demand. New customer acquisition and market expansion are the leading strategic drivers for APAC institutions, cited by 46% of respondents, the highest share of any region. This could suggest that digital asset adoption in APAC is less compliance-led and more growth-led in infrastructure decisions. The regulatory picture is also becoming more constructive. Globally, 96% of financial institutions expect upcoming regulation to be favourable, with frameworks from MAS and HKMA cited as examples for this shift. APAC’s Digital Asset Build is Taking On a Different Shape APAC’s infrastructure priorities also suggest that the region has its own distinct digital asset roadmap. Amy commented, “The most telling signal is where APAC diverges on use case priorities. Every other region globally ranks 24/7 settlement at the top. In APAC, digital asset custody takes that spot, at 84%. Custody is the foundation everything else is built on, and that points to institutions building for the long term, not just running a pilot.” This distinction is important, given that APAC’s infrastructure priorities point to a different kind of digital asset build. Tokenised money market funds and tokenised securities each lead the region’s asset mix at 21%, making APAC the only region where capital markets instruments sit at the top. Own institution stablecoin issuance, by contrast, stands at 6%, the lowest among the regions surveyed in the Financial Grid Fireblocks report. That capital markets and custody build is also reflected in what APAC institutions want from Financial Market Infrastructures (FMI). Some 55%  of the region’s respondents rate clearing as a central counterparty as a critical FMI role, the highest share of any region globally. The Global Build Is Well Funded, But Production Still Lags Beyond APAC, the global findings point to a broader market that has made the decision to build, but is still working towards fully converting that commitment into production capability. According to the Financial Grid report, 88% of financial institutions have allocated or will allocate budget to digital asset infrastructure in 2026. However, only 16% have reached the production stage. Source: The Financial Grid, Fireblocks That gap between investment and readiness indicates that while the decision to build has been made, the market is working on converting that commitment into live, scalable infrastructure. More than half of financial institutions are spending US$1 million or more on digital asset infrastructure this year, which places them beyond early experimentation, the report indicates. When operating at that level, budgets are deployed towards vendor selection, architectural decisions, systems integration, staffing, compliance work, and the operational foundations required for production. This is conversion spending, but it does not escape from the lens that production will remain the real test. The next phase will require hitting the right note on infrastructure decisions, architecture choices, and entry points. Featured image edited by Fintech News Singapore based on an image by End.ru99 on Magnific The post APAC To Outspend The World On Digital Asset Infrastructure In 2026 appeared first on Fintech Singapore.

What is stopping businesses from fully tapping a US$336 billion cross-border payments opportunity? Ask the merchants trying to sell beyond their home markets, and the answer often comes back to infrastructure. They would say that payments may look simple at the point of sale, but the work behind it is not. They grow heavier with every new corridor. Each market adds another layer of work behind the payment itself, and those hidden demands can narrow margins long before a business reaches meaningful scale. Kozen Tan, CEO, Singapore of LianLian Global, sees the consequences of this fragmentation firsthand, particularly as businesses across the Asia Pacific reassess the financial infrastructure behind their global expansion plans. Kozen Tan “Payment security and compliance trust are no longer just back-office concerns — they have become key front-end factors that influence whether customers complete a purchase,” he said. Those shortcomings increasingly show up in revenue performance. With global cart abandonment rates often exceeding 70%, merchants can lose potential buyers quickly when payment experiences feel unfamiliar or fail to reflect local expectations. Cross-border payment providers are now being judged less narrowly, especially as AI-powered capabilities move from concept to commercial reality. Cross-Border Growth Still Breaks at the Infrastructure Layer. But Why? The burden grows market by market, as merchants deal with more operational work behind the scenes before a payment ever reaches completion. A business may find demand overseas and still struggle to make the economics work once the hidden costs of moving money between markets start shaping daily decisions. Now, growth plans can look clean on paper, but the machinery behind international payments often determines whether expansion remains manageable. LianLian Global enters the story through this less visible part of cross-border commerce. Its platform is built around the work merchants often have to piece together when they expand internationally, covering the financial processes behind collections, payouts, foreign exchange and merchant operations. The aim is to make expansion feel a little less fragmented. A merchant that would otherwise manage several disconnected payment relationships can operate through a more consolidated structure, giving finance teams better control over how money moves between markets. Smaller companies feel that difference most sharply, as reduced operational complexity gives management teams more time to build demand in new markets instead of wrestling with payments infrastructure. Singapore’s Strategic Role in LianLian Global’s Southeast Asia Push A model like that depends heavily on regulatory credibility, particularly in Southeast Asia, where payment habits and supervisory expectations can vary sharply between markets. But why Singapore? Kozen explained that the Lion City gives LianLian a practical base for that work. The company established its local entity in 2018, before its subsidiary STARLINK secured a Major Payment Institution licence from the Monetary Authority of Singapore in 2021. The licence gives LianLian a stronger foundation to support regional payment activity from one of Asia’s most established financial hubs, while also helping the company build trust with partners operating in neighbouring markets. The licence given by Singapore also sits within a wider regulatory footprint. LianLian holds 67 payment licences and related qualifications globally, a network Kozen Tan sees as central to how the company builds confidence with merchants and partners. “Holding payment licenses in multiple countries and regions shows we fully meet local financial regulatory rules,” he pointed out. Merchants entering unfamiliar markets often need reassurance before they commit to new payment arrangements. Regulatory coverage can reduce uncertainty around onboarding and local service adaptation, while giving payment providers more room to serve different markets without weakening oversight. In cross-border payments, trust has to travel with the money. AI Moves Closer to the Core of Cross-Border Payments Licensing also gives LianLian a foundation, but Kozen believes the next stage of competition will depend on intelligence built into the infrastructure itself. “We believe that valuable fintech companies in the future must be AI-native.” Throughout financial services, AI is moving from experimental projects into the operating core. LianLian is applying that shift to the areas where cross-border merchants often lose time, including localisation and the preparation of market-ready materials. The company’s Loop AI platform shows how that strategy is taking shape. Built for cross-border merchants, the platform supports translation in more than 100 languages and helps businesses produce content for overseas markets faster than traditional workflows allow. According to Kozen: “Loop AI has helped merchants boost content production efficiency by dozens of times and cut operational labor costs by more than 50%.” Faster production cycles can help businesses respond to local demand with greater speed, particularly when they do not have large regional teams on the ground. The broader implication is that the future use of AI in cross-border payments may depend on the intelligence surrounding the payment flow, not only the movement of funds itself. Merchants need infrastructure that helps them operate in unfamiliar markets while keeping payment flows reliable. Preparing for Commerce Run by AI Agents LianLian’s ambitions also reach into a more automated version of global commerce, where AI agents could take on a larger role in commercial decision-making and financial execution. That future-facing strategy includes Agent Wallet, a product LianLian plans to launch for an era in which AI agents play a larger role in how businesses purchase, pay and manage value. Kozen describes the shift memorably: “We are shifting from ‘people looking for money’ to ‘money finding people’.” The idea points towards machine-to-machine financial infrastructure, where intelligent systems can carry out payments on behalf of users or businesses. At scale, that infrastructure could influence how companies manage liquidity and automated purchasing, making payment execution part of a wider system of intelligent commerce rather than a separate step after a commercial decision. Payments To Move Closer to the Operating Layer “We believe that payment companies in the future will evolve from cross-border payment specialists into AI-native builders of new global intelligent financial infrastructure,” LianLian Global’s CEO of Singapore highlighted. Transaction speed and pricing still matter, although they no longer tell the full story for payment firms serving global merchants. Sustained advantage will increasingly come from pairing regulatory trust with operational intelligence, especially as businesses look for providers that can reduce compliance and execution gaps. LianLian’s strategy suggests a payment company trying to move closer to the operating system behind global commerce, supporting the work that surrounds the movement of money. Where AI and Cross-Border Commerce May Be Heading For all the talk about frictionless global commerce, cross-border payments remain stubbornly local in practice. Each market brings its own rules and payment habits, while the cost of getting things wrong can be steep, especially for merchants without large compliance or finance teams. That reality helps explain LianLian Global’s AI push. The company is betting that payment infrastructure will need to become more intelligent to keep pace with the way businesses now expand, sell, and manage money internationally. AI will not replace the discipline required in cross-border finance. If anything, it raises the bar. Payment providers will need to prove that intelligence can support faster decision-making without weakening oversight, adding opacity, or leaving merchants dependent on systems they cannot properly interrogate. Speed will still matter, but the stronger differentiator may be the ability to make cross-border commerce feel less brittle for the merchants relying on it. LianLian now has to show that AI can deliver that resilience without adding another layer of complexity. Featured image: Edited by Fintech News Singapore based on images provided by LianLian Global. The post How Could AI Ease the Friction in Cross-Border Payments? appeared first on Fintech Singapore.

CIMB Group has appointed Mak Joon Nien as CEO of Growth Markets and CEO of CIMB Singapore, subject to regulatory approval. Mak will be based in Singapore and will join the CIMB Group Executive Committee. In his role as CEO of Growth Markets, he will lead CIMB Singapore and oversee CIMB Thailand and CIMB Cambodia. His focus will be on accelerating business growth, strengthening cross-border connectivity and advancing regional opportunities. Novan Amirudin Novan Amirudin, Group CEO of CIMB Group, said, “Growth Markets is a key pillar of CIMB’s ASEAN strategy, and Mak’s deep regional experience, strong execution track record and client relationships will accelerate the group’s ambition in cross-border banking, regional wealth management and investment advisory. We look forward to working together to further strengthen CIMB’s ASEAN franchise and position the Group as top-of-mind ASEAN bank by 2030.” Mak has nearly three decades of international banking experience. He began his career at Standard Chartered in 1997 and spent 15 years in Singapore, focusing on mergers and acquisitions and leveraged finance. Mak later served as Managing Director responsible for private equity client coverage, before returning to Malaysia in 2017 to lead Standard Chartered’s Corporate, Commercial and Institutional Banking business. In 2022, he was appointed the first homegrown CEO of Standard Chartered Malaysia.     Featured image: Edited by Fintech News Singapore, based on image by Frolopiaton Palm via Magnific The post CIMB Names Mak Joon Nien as Singapore CEO After Nearly Three Decades at StanChart appeared first on Fintech Singapore.

Crypto.com has launched Crypto.com Travel, an in-app booking service powered by Bookit that gives eligible users another way to earn crypto rewards. The service is available through the Crypto.com App for Level Up subscribers in eligible jurisdictions, expanding the company’s benefits programme into travel and entertainment bookings. Crypto.com Travel gives users access to more than one million global travel listings, including hotels, flights, cruises, car rentals and experiences, as well as 20 million tickets. Level Up subscribers can earn up to 35% back in Crypto.com’s native CRO token on eligible bookings, depending on their tier, booking type and applicable terms. Basic Tier users can receive up to a 5% rebate. Rewards are issued after booking confirmation, although timing may vary by booking type and policy. Users may also earn up to an additional 6% back in CRO when paying with Crypto.com Pay, the Crypto.com Prepaid Visa Card or the Crypto.com Visa Signature Credit Card, where available and depending on tier. Eric Anziani Eric Anziani, President and Chief Operating Officer at Crypto.com, said, “This new initiative adds to what is already the most comprehensive rewards program in crypto and with additional benefits available through CRO, the cryptocurrency used in the Cronos ecosystem. By partnering with Bookit, we are delivering a seamless booking experience while enabling our users to turn everyday travel into meaningful crypto-based rewards.” Lin Dai Bookit CEO Lin Dai said, “Bookit is dedicated to helping major institutions launch travel and commerce platforms that pair world-class booking infrastructure with rewards designed for a new generation of consumers, as tokenisation reshapes consumer spending. Through our partnership with Crypto.com, we are enabling millions of users to earn CRO through everyday travel and experiences while bringing tokenised rewards and digital assets into mainstream commerce.” Crypto.com Travel also includes flexible booking options, such as refundable and pay-at-stay options, depending on availability. Rewards vary by Level Up tier, booking type and region, and are subject to terms and conditions.     Featured image: Edited by Fintech News Singapore, based on images by MD.Laik alom mollik via Magnific, and Crypto.com The post Crypto.com Brings Travel, Entertainment Bookings to Its App appeared first on Fintech Singapore.

Temenos has launched two composable solutions that allow banks to modernise retail deposits and lending without replacing their full core systems. Temenos Composable Retail Deposits and Temenos Composable Retail Lending are cloud-native, standalone capabilities that connect to existing banking systems through APIs and event-driven integrations. The solutions are aimed at banks still running on legacy platforms that are costly to upgrade and difficult to integrate with newer technologies. Temenos said each capability has clear functional boundaries and its own deployment and upgrade cycle, helping banks make changes without affecting other systems. Barb Morgan Barb Morgan, Chief Product and Technology Officer at Temenos, said, “Banks need to modernise from legacy systems to stay competitive, but they cannot afford disruption. Our Composable Retail Deposits and Composable Retail Lending enable banks to upgrade critical core domains progressively without destabilising existing operations. It is a clear step forward in our composability strategy, focused on delivery, flexibility and customer value.”     Featured image: Edited by Fintech News Singapore, based on image by Frolopiaton Palm via Magnific   The post Temenos Launches Composable Solutions for Retail Deposits and Lending appeared first on Fintech Singapore.