Viewpoints

The payments landscape in Asia is diverse. With almost half of the world’s population calling the region home, and huge differences between cultures, it is understandable that meeting the needs of both consumers, merchants and financial institutions (FIs) is far from simple.

The Middle East and Africa (MEA) is often reported as having one of the smallest payments markets in the world in terms of available services. Despite this, it is extremely fast-paced. This is, in part, due to the number of new disruptive players entering the market.

Traditionally the word ‘underserved’ is reserved for the B2C sector of financial services, however, this terminology has become increasingly relevant to the financial institutions themselves, whereby they are being underserved by their technology partners. Underserved FIs often underserve their customers.

It’s strange to think that 20 years ago, payments didn’t really exist as an industry in its own right. Fast-forward to the start of this decade and it’s a very different story – payments, banking, fintech, commerce (and much more) are all part of a thriving, complex, interwoven ecosystem.

Ahead of International Women's Day, our Executive Vice President Maria Nottingham lets us in on a typical day in her busy work life

HSBC’s Brian McKenney, Compass Plus’ Paul Chandler and host, Doug Mackenzie, discuss the future of payments. Together, they diagnose some of the problems banks and payment platforms faced earlier in the pandemic and look at how the industry learnt from these.

2020 really has been the year that no one expected. Whilst the COVID-19 pandemic swept the globe, there were other topics that kept us talking, distracting us as much as possible from the global lockdown.

As 2020 comes to a close, we asked our payments professionals worldwide about the changes they have seen this year to the payments industry, and how they envision these changes might shape the future.

In this edition of our Podbyte series we discuss super apps. From their success in the East and whether this can be replicated in the West, Kirsty Berry, Head of Global Marketing, and Bethan Cowper, AVP Market Development and Business Support, also weigh up the benefits of onboarding with a successful payments super app, versus developing your own.

Since the first appearance of electronic payments and subsequent birth of the payments industry, we have seen a number of monumental shifts driven by the requirements that each new ‘era’ has presented.