Richard Teng, CEO of Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, suggested Tuesday that Western firms were going to remain the main beneficiaries of a growing financial system—even if Asia drives most of that growth.
“Western companies, by the sheer size of what they have and the regulatory framework they can influence…are going to have an outsized say in how they’re going to capture this growth,” he said at a Fortune-hosted session at the Insights Forum in Singapore.
“What is important for policymakers is to make sure that your local competitors have a fair shake,” he said. “You have to allow for experimentation on a much broader basis.”
The ‘Wild West’ of Asia
The smartphone beats the wallet when it comes to paying for things in Asia. Asia-Pacific users spent $9.8 trillion through digital wallets in 2023, making up two-thirds of all such spending, according to a Deloitte report released earlier this year.
Asia is the “Wild West” when it comes to payments, Vincent Iswara, CEO of Dana, an Indonesian mobile wallet company, said on Tuesday “There is no standard most of the time,” he continued. Dana, founded in 2017, is one of Southeast Asia’s largest e-wallets; the startup has over 180 million users.
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Regulators in Asia are slower and more risk-averse than their Western counterparts when it comes to establishing new regulations, he explained.
That regulatory hesitance has spurred a boom in e-wallets and digital banks across the Asia-Pacific region, as companies target unbanked and underbanked populations in developing markets. These consumers are often young, have rising incomes, and have smartphones.
“Not everyone has credit cards…but everyone has a mobile phone,” Jessie Toh, global treasurer and vice-president at Coda Payments, said. “That phone is the key and gateway to financial inclusion and accessibility.”
Coda Payments, founded in 2011, offers services to solutions to video games publishers to ask users for money directly rather than through third-party payment platforms. The firm is backed by GIC, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund.
The rise of stablecoins
Toh explained that the ease of using mobile phones for payments has created a “skip generation.” These consumers are also more open to using alternative forms of currency, like stablecoins, whose value is pegged to another currency or real-world commodity.
Consumers in economies with volatile currencies are particularly interested in these new payment methods. “In quite a lot of these markets, there’s a lot of regulation [of] the ability to actually hold U.S. dollars,” she said. Stablecoins lets users protect themselves against inflation and local currency depreciation.
Teng noted that stablecoins are growing outside of the U.S. due to a need from residents in lower-income countries. Younger consumers in Africa, Latin America and parts of Asia now use stablecoins as a way to protect their money, or to transfer money more cheaply. Stablecoins also allow countries to move away from the U.S.-led financial system, Teng said.
