This week sees the return of Singapore Fintech Festival, with AI and quantum technology at the centre of discussions. The event is also highlighting international collaboration on cross-border payments among banks, merchants and technology providers. Here, we’ve explored key APAC-related news and deals from cross-border players this week. 

Ahead of the event, Mastercard launched Pay Local for countries in the APAC region, enabling customers to link their credit and debit cards to local digital wallets. With the new service, resident cardholders and international travellers can make real-time purchases without setting up or topping up a prepaid account. Pay Local currently targets APAC countries where digital wallets are widely available, including Indonesia, Malaysia and Cambodia; however, Mastercard also plans to expand the service to LatAm, the EU, the Middle East, Africa and Southern Asia. 

Meanwhile, Wise also announced its partnership with Standard Chartered’s SC Remit. By integrating Wise’s infrastructure into SC Remit’s remittance services, the partnership aims to provide instant mid-market rate money transfers in 21 currencies across Asia and the Middle East. The move is the latest APAC-related development for Wise, which also gained direct access to the Philippines instant payments system this week, having become the first foreign money transfers company to directly access Japan’s payment clearing network in October.  

Similarly, Singapore-based Ant International is expanding partnerships with new regional payments applications. The company’s wallet-focused cross-border payments solution Alipay+ already covers the many players in the APAC region, including OCBC Bank in Singapore, which uses Alipay to enable overseas payments. Ant International is currently focusing on improving Alipay’s coverage in popular travel destinations, to support international micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs). 

MSMEs are also being targeted by Amazon, which explored blockchain technology with a demo of its tradable digital tokens in partnership with HSBC and payments infrastructure provider StraitsX. The tokens facilitate smart contracts, programmable payments and digital currencies, which could simplify cross-border payments for independent MSMEs on Amazon’s network. However, this demo was meant to be conceptual and the company has no plans to launch a related service or product anytime soon.

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Niece Prayoonrat

Niece is a Data Journalism Intern at FXC Intelligence, writing reports and analysis to support the company’s weekly content and projects. She has a passion for finding insights and telling stories from financial data. She has an MSc in Media, Communication and Development from LSE and a BSc in Political Economy from King’s College London.