Future of fintech in Southeast Asia and what will discuss at Echelon Asia Summit 2023?
Southeast Asia is a lucrative market for the investors’ community around the world because of its potential development, especially in Vietnam, Indonesia and Malaysia. For 10 years the technology in this region has been booming with many unicorn start-ups.
The first paragraph of the article Should Fintech be capitalized on in Southeast Asia countries? showed us that the continuous growth of fintech in this area is huge and its potential in the future is extremely high. Besides, the development of a number of other industries also contributes to the development of companies in this field.
So, will the upcoming Echelon Asia Summit 2023 conference at Singapore EXPO on June 14 and 15 cover these issues? Let's find out with FinFan.
The evolution of fintech in Southeast Asia
Because the percentage of informal workers in these nations is still above the cutoff, it is well known that Southeast Asia has a relatively high rate of unbanked and underbanked individuals (more than 70% of the population).
It is advantageous for technology companies in these nations to constantly look for solutions to these urgent issues and to realize the objective of providing financial services experiences to all socioeconomic groups.
Another issue is the fact that there is still very little non-cash trade taking place between businesses and both clients and other businesses in the region. Many people still live by the adage that "cash is king" in some nations, and the street life in these nations has not yet permitted individuals to utilize alternative forms of payment to pay for anything.
For the same reasons as previously stated, fintech companies in these nations must discover the most practical strategy to alter locals' purchasing patterns (MoMo's method in the first stage is a good example of that when this ewallet company turned grocery store parties into transaction points for its own service).
It is evident that the growth of fintech in Southeast Asian nations was inevitable, and that these businesses have smart market development strategies when they had to carry out large-scale projects. Slowly, the modern is encroaching on the ancient.
What fintech topics are predicted to appear in Echelon Asia Summit 2023?
(Re)Building infrastructure of the traditional financial companies (banks, lending, etc).
Through a number of ways, these technology companies can bring the best solutions for traditional financial services parties.
They can fall into one of the following 3 types of financial technology transformations:
- Banking-as-a-service: when technology companies help traditional banks from start to finish through the built-in API, enhance money transfer and payment services on top of the providers’ regulated infrastructure.
- Bank-connections-as-a-service (Open banking) wider than banking-as-a-service: providing services to link other financial services with banks through a 3rd party by integrating APIs into the payment platform of that traditional bank.
- Point solutions in as-a-service: that is still an API integration for the platform of a traditional bank but only to address one of the many services of a traditional bank.
Unbanked and underbanked fintech
The fact that unbanked and underbanked people account for more than 70% of the population of these countries is a gold mine to exploit for future fintech services.
However, how to convert this group of people to use the services that these fintech companies offer remains a huge challenge for them when most unbanked and underbanked people don’t have income too high and aren’t able to update technology.
It is for these reasons that it is extremely difficult to establish a fintech system for the above subjects.
Because in order for unbanked and underbanked people to understand high-tech products and services, fintech companies need to go deep into their ordinary daily lives, talk to them about their problems as well as how they earn their livelihood, how they pay for their family's monthly living as well as the places they often go (including the coffee shop they usually sit at if possible) instead using fancy, sophisticated words and a high content of terminology.
In summary, the future of fintech in Southeast Asia is predicted to be the most talked about topic in the Echelon Asia Summit 2023 conference taking place in Singapore on June 14 and 15.
Hopefully the conference goes well and fintech companies in the region will come up with more new ideas to further develop this field and create more products and services suitable for diverse customer groups (especially unbanked and underbanked customers).