HIGHLIGHTS OF MONEY 20/20 ASIA

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towardsblockchain

4 min readApr 2, 2019

(SECOND EDITION)

DATE: 19'th — 21'st MARCH 2019
LOCATION: MARINA BAY SANDS EXPO & CONVENTION CENTRE, SINGAPORE

AIM
1. LEARN ABOUT THE LATEST TECHNOLOGY BEING USED IN THE MARKET.
2. A COMMON PLATFORM FOR FIRMS TO INTERACT WITH EACH OTHER.
3. MAKE 3 MONTHS OF CONNECTIONS IN 3 DAYS.

4 MAJOR TOPICS COVERED IN THE CONFERENCE

➡ “CHALLENGER BANKS” PLAYBOOK
Includes digital banks, the ongoing march of the tech giants and incumbent
banks, which are fighting back.

➡ PLATFORM ECOLOGY MODEL
Discussion about the new type of business model developed in China,
therefore, becoming platforms/super-apps offering their own products, along
with the third party products, which is further disrupting the existing business models.

➡ TOKENISATION / TOKEN DAY
Catching up with the changes in the trends of cryptocurrencies.

➡ CYBER SECURITY
Next crisis is predicted to be a cyber crisis and not a financial crisis. Therefore,
understand the psychology of hackers.

NEW LAUNCHES AND BIG ANNOUNCEMENTS

Tony Fernandes (CEO of AirAsia, Co-founder of BigPay)

Talked about Bigpay, which is an e-wallet and prepaid card which will
waive off 2% fee charged by overseas ATM cards.
He believes to achieve low-cost transactions, transparency and volume with the help of BigPay with a zero exchange rate fee.
The card is accepted anywhere a master card is accepted.

2. Jesse Lund (Head of Blockchain Solutions, Financial Services IBM)

IBM, hours before the conference, launched World wire in 72 countries
and 47 currencies. World wire is a real-time global payment network which integrates payment messaging, settlement and clearing on a single unified network.
It aims at faster payment processing, lower costs, increased efficiency,
simplified configurations and security-rich networks.
Here’s the tweet of the official announcement by Jesse Lund-

3. Reuben Lai (Senior Managing Director of Grab Financial Unit)

Grow with grab has been described as a “super app” which has started offering loans to micro-entrepreneurs and is leading towards extending its lending capacity to small and medium sized businesses along with a micro-insurance option for financial security for the entrepreneurs and the employees.
The Grabpay digital wallet will be integrated with a point-of-sale system for easy acceptance of GrabPay Transfers with Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf and Paris Baguette for trial. Additionally, online payment options will also be made available.
Another new feature launched is Pay Later, which will give their customers the benefit of payments over instalments and zero-payment interests.

Image Source — https://asia.money2020.com/2019-photo-gallery-all#

4. Henry Ma (Vice President and CIO, WeBank)

The CIO of China’s first digital bank gave a speech on the rapid growth of finance technology and revealed the Golden Rule: Any technology it applies has to either optimize processes, improve customer experience, help scale, reduce costs and mitigate risk.
Along with the four major pillars of Fintech: Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, Cloud Computing and Data.
He believes that the Open Banking approach is High-volume and incurs Low costs.
We Bank operates on the “Three Opens” approach: Open collaboration, Open platform and Open Collaboration. This helps the bank to lower their costs and achieve its goals and targets optimally.

5. Andy Maguire (Group Managing Director and Group COO at HSBC)

“WE WON’T INVEST UNLESS WE TEND TO TAKE IT TO SCALE”

HSBC has been working on Project Iceberg and has partnered with more than 100 fintech start-ups. The organization has been planning to build a stand-alone digital banking start-up for business customers.
HSBC also plans on encouraging people who do not bank with the institution to join with them and expand in other markets.

6. Startup Pitch Contest 2019 Money 20/20 Asia.

Start-Up Pitch At Money 20/20 is a FinTech Ecosystem’s Hottest Startup challenge, which brings together Startup’s in Artificial Intelligence, Mobile Payments, Cyber Security and more.
A panel of VC’s helped in selecting the final three contestants out of the 15 best startups looking for the best opportunity of growth. The winner receives a cash price of (SGD) $40,000.
On Day three of the conference, Dana Cita won the startup pitch contest at money 20/20 Asia. Her Approach is to make Education in Southern Asia affordable so that more students can attend university and get a chance to achieve higher education. She has partnered with some universities and so far has funded 500 students in Indonesia and will launch in the Philippines soon.

CONCLUSION

Money 20/20 Asia was a huge success. 300+ handpicked speakers presented their case studies in the packed three-day conference on topics like risks involved in future technology, digital identity in Asia, rise and falls in ICOs etc.

The conference covered the latest fintech topics and various insights by fintech leaders and tech giants across the globe.

Money 20/20 successfully completed its aim of providing a common platform for the firms to interact with each other, make connections and learn more about the ever-evolving technology.

REFERENCES

HIGHLIGHTS OF MONEY 20/20 ASIA

Written by Shubhi Tiwari