Copyright channelnewsasia
A DECADE OF FINTECH EVOLUTION As the Singapore FinTech Festival marks its 10th anniversary, Mr Menon, who is now chairman of the Global Finance & Technology Network, was also asked to reflect on how far the country’s financial technology sector has come. What began as a handful of start-ups and pilots has blossomed into a global innovation hub, he recounted. The first wave centred on payments and national digital infrastructure such as Singpass, MyInfo and PayNow, which created the foundations for a digital economy. Singapore’s Fintech movement over the past 10 years has been about the “collaboration within the ecosystem to bring about all these developments, and to enable them to function through e-commerce and other platforms”, Mr Menon added. “For the next 10 years, we will see an expansion of multilateral digital payment systems, more connectivity (and) faster settlement times.” Another wave was asset tokenisation, which involves converting ownership rights of a real-world or financial asset into digital tokens on a blockchain. This concept still has a long way to run, Mr Menon noted. He said that the recent crypto downturn has made the industry more aware of its risks even as its potential remains strong. The challenge now, he added, is to “figure out the good from the bad”, managing the risks of private cryptocurrencies while developing stablecoins and central bank digital currencies that could make the financial system more efficient and resilient.
