The Current Digital Payments Scenario - Trends & Future Prospects

Asia Business Outlook recently got a chance to interact with Angus, wherein he shared his insights on the current digital payments landscape, latest trends and many other aspects related to the industry. Below are the select few extracts from the exclusive interview –  

Angus Chiu holds a master’s degree in Information & Electronic Engineering from The Hong Kong Polytechnic University and MBA in Entrepreneurship, Strategy, Organizational Leadership & Business Ethics from The University of Hong Kong. In his career spanning over two decades, he has handled key roles across an array of companies such as BAI Communications, Schmidt Electronics, Microtag Engineering, LSCM R&D Centre, UL Identity Management & Security, and NEXT Biometrics, prior to joining MineSec in 2019.

What are your thoughts on the current digital payments landscape?

Contact-less payments is one thing that has gained widespread prominence in recent times. Due to the global covid pandemic and changing consumer behavior, governments all over the world are now promoting contact-less payments among all stakeholders of the industry. As a result, the governments across many countries have now also increased the permissible transaction limit for contact-less payments and money transfers. In accordance to this, BFSIs and fintech companies are now readying themselves to handle this sudden load and further encouraging individuals to use contact-less payments.

Another trend that has taken the financial services industry by storm is mobile banking, wherein customers can now avail almost every banking service via their smartphones at the just a few clicks. Thus, mobile banking & payments have eased the life of both companies and their end customers due to the myriad of benefits they offer – increased process efficiency, reduced processing time, easy accessibility, paperless, and requiring less manual intervention, to name few. Apart from making payments and transferring money, mobile banking has also enabled retail merchants and even small shop owners to accept payments digitally through various channels such as NFC, UPI, mobile banking and many others.

How can companies maintain their revenue while catering to customers who are not keen for digital payments?

Despite e-Commerce gaining widespread prominence globally, many consumers are still averse to making payments online. For such customers, companies can now offer customers the option of making a purchase online and making the payment during the time of delivery of the product either through cash or using their debit or credit card. This way, hyperlocal businesses can avoid losing-out on potential customers and improve their revenues as well.

"The process of developing a solution, getting is certified and then launching it into market takes approximately 18 months, which is a very long Time-to-Market considering today’s hypercompetitive business landscape."

How are today’s modern day technologies enabling BFSIs to their payment functions?

To streamline the process, we develop all the solutions in house and provide them to the BFSIs as white label solutions. This way, enable the companies to cut-down significant time duration in terms of product development and help they stay focused on their core operational functions. Usually, the process of developing a solution, getting is certified and then launching it into market takes approximately 18 months, which is a very long Time-to-Market considering today’s hypercompetitive business landscape. Using our solutions, companies are now able to reduce this duration to just three months. This way, we are helping towards the improvement of digital payments today.

What is your advice to young professionals and budding entrepreneurs aspiring to be future finance industry leaders?

Being in the finance vertical which involves the critical aspect of handling people’s money, any professional wanting to enter the financial services space must ensure to never forget about the regulatory compliances and guidelines that are mandatory to be adhered by for any business in this market. No matter how good and creative you product or solutions, it is bound to fail and even adversely impact the organization reputation among the customers if it fails to adhere to the necessary legal frameworks and regulatory compliances. Thus, make sure to keep this aspect as the topmost priority while developing a solution.