From the 22nd to the 24th of April, the PagSeguro team flew to Bangkok, Thailand to join Money 20/20 Asia 2025, which we sponsored and attended for the first time.
Besides discussing everything about Latin American payments, e-commerce opportunities in the region, customer behavior, and why Latam should be a key market for APAC merchants, we were also there with the goal of absorbing and sharing knowledge about the current trends in the fintech world, especially as they relate to cross-border payments and emerging markets – which were heavily present in the Asia-based event.
To understand more about what was discussed in Bangkok about these and other key trends, what industry experts foresee for the future of the world of payments, and more, keep reading!
What's powering the present and the future of cross-border payments
With the Asian market more and more mature, the region's merchants and fintech startups start looking abroad in search of new revenue streams – something easier now than ever, after the massive digitization boom during the pandemic and the rise of remote work, meetings, and collaborations. In this context, it's easy to see why Money 20-20 Asia – which might reunite companies from around the globe, but also makes a point to highlight Asian businesses – had cross-border payments at the core of its content sessions.
For the event’s speakers, one of the biggest challenges of operating cross-border is being aligned and compliant with all the different regulations in each country you want to operate in or sell to. Then there are also the cultural differences, which impact how the customers prefer to shop and pay, for example. To navigate both the regulatory and the strategic obstacles, investing in deeply understanding the local market is essential – and does not have to be done by each merchant on their own.
Here, counting on expert local partners is key to unlocking new markets in an easier, much less bureaucratic way. With PagSeguro, for example, a single integration enables merchants to sell to 17 Latin American countries, with over 140 local payment methods, and supported by our +20 years of experience in Latam. Thus, going international can be seamless for the merchants as well as for their customers, who will be able to buy from them using the payment methods they know and prefer.
It was a consensus throughout Money 20/20 Asia that looking into cross-border businesses is one of the main ways in which companies – both fintech businesses and merchants – are looking at or already following to tap into new customer bases and revenue streams. With the right strategies and partners, it can lead to massive growth in sales and reach.
Innovation that inspires
Whether we’re talking about cross-border or domestic businesses, one thing is certain: to remain relevant throughout the years and keep scaling up, you must find the “white spaces”: that’s what Ben Weiss, founder and CEO of AI startup Syntilay, defined as those untapped markets or segments that, when invested in, can bring in major growth.
And for fintech companies to keep evolving and building long-lasting impact, inspiration can come from other segments of the industry as well. That was why Weiss shared the stage with business consultant Joe Foster, who founded Reebok with his brother Jeff in 1958.
With the goal of discussing how lasting brands have been implementing innovation and what the world of fintech can learning from them, the speakers reinforced that being open to taking risks and making mistakes is essential to truly innovate – “mistakes don’t matter, because you learn a lot from them”, highlighted Foster. Even with all the changes the world and the market have gone through since 1958, for the businessman, that openness to risk remains true.
That connects to something Pitcha Siriyaphan, Head of Payments – Thailand at J.P. Morgan Payments, said in another session: technology has evolved extra-fast in the last 10-15 years, but businesses are still searching for “anything that gives us more efficiency”. Today, the tech showing the most potential, and results, for that is AI. However, “not every company needs to adopt every trend, every new technology”, he added. At the end of the day, it remains about what you do with it.
What can we expect of, and hope from, AI
As we have been saying for a while, in Money 20/20 Asia 2025 it was also clear that AI for the sake of AI cannot do a lot for a company – the key is to understand how it can improve processes and products internally and-or externally, thus creating actual value.
For John Medina, COO at the Philippine Bank of Communications, human-centrism is and will continue to be essential: "Don't get lost in the technology; don't become obsessed with the solution, but ith the objectives", he provoked.
AI appeared today especially in the context of fighting fraud, which is definitely one of the main challenges fintech companies, and their own clients, are dealing with right now. After all, as technology advances, it also allows more and more refined fraud attempts, which in turn require more and more advanced technology to be stopped. “Fraud is a never-ending cat-and-mouse scheme”, defined SHIELD’s Chief Risk Officer Joanna Fong.
In this scenario, she believes that “AI should be a tool to empower anti-fraud processes, not a replacement for human judgment” – as the panel she participated in highlighted, AI’s success depends a lot on the quality and the quantity of the data it has available, which is not always easy to work with considering the sensitivity of the information involved in fintech.
However, the future does seem bright in the fight against fraud: with a growing understanding that AI is a means to an end, not an end in itself, companies start to work better with the technology; meanwhile, in the bustling fintech world, new solutions and tools come along to help businesses.
Why fintech needs “co-opetition”
Financial companies operate in a landscape that requires collaboration: to launch innovative new products, to target other countries, to increase payment method offerings, and much more. The problem is that, often, the best partner turns out to be a competitor.
But businesses do not have to choose between collaboration and competition – rather, they should embrace “co-opetition”, one of the words most often heard in Bangkok during Money 20/20. In the balance between striving to be the best in what you do and aiming to forge relevant connections, accepting that things are usually not so black and white in the fintech industry is important.
Collaboration should also be considered in terms of sharing knowledge, for example, to better fight fraud – as moderator Priya Rajan, founder and CEO of StageZeroAI, pointed out. All in all, a lot of the challenges faced by Fintech companies are similar, and collaboration – or just “co-opetition” – can help us advance faster.
“One player cannot solve everything”, said Thunes’ Head of Asia Pacific James Teodorini. And for truly cross-border payment systems, interoperability – for example, between the RTPs in each country – is fundamental. “There is always going to be an ecosystem”, he added.
Sriram Muthukrishnan, Group Head of Product Management at DBS Bank, agreed: “Payments are evolving fast, and collaboration is no longer optional. One single company cannot cover all aspects of global payments by themselves”, he positioned.
The future of money is instant
As a Brazilian, Latin-America focused company, we always like to notice, when attending foreign industry events, how advanced the landscape and the conversation around instant payments is in our region. With Brazil’s Pix as a global benchmark for RTP systems and a longer-standing habit of mobile payments, our home country has one of the most advanced and complete instant payment methods in the world.
But the global payment landscape is walking more and more towards a massively instant scenario. One major case presented at Money 20/20 Asia was India’s UPI (Unified Payments Interface), which has over 350 million users and processes 75% of the country’s digital payments. At the event’s stage, Ritesh Shukla, CEO of NPCI, founder of UPI, shared some details about the reasons behind the method’s success and the plans for the future.
In our perspective, two major pillars of massively adopted digital payment methods are a population with access to mobile devices and internet, and a nation-wide push to make the system work and scale. Those factors also supported UPI: Shukla highlighted how nowadays it is very cheap for Indian citizens to have access to mobile internet and smartphones, which enables most of the population to have a device that is essential for RTP growth.
Besides, all players of the payment landscape should incentivize such methods, since it advances innovation in the sector: “It’s all about collaboration, collaboration, collaboration”, reinforced the CEO, “and about leveraging the power of the ecosystem”.
With the goal of reaching 20 new countries in the next 4 years, Shukla has cross-border instant payments as one of the most important strategies for the future of UPI. “We aim to create a dominant market coverage and to create scale”, he detailed. A similar goal is part of the Central Bank of Brazil’s long-term plans for Pix, but the main challenge for cross-border RTPs is interoperability, an essential strategy and tool for cross-border payments.
Building the banks of tomorrow
Even in a context of uncertainty (deeply discussed in another major event we covered this year, South by Southwest), the industry is always striving to predict and prepare for what is to come. At Money 20/20 Asia, the experts understand that the best preparation is “to be able to adapt to the unexpected”, but one thing seems to be clear: banks will remain having a key role within finance.
With fintech becoming more and more the core of the financial industry, and banks no longer as the leaders of the industry, they remain having a key role – when traditional companies know how to adapt and innovate, they can enjoy all the potential of fintech while also reaping the benefits of their long history, such as brand reputation, decades of customer data, and a close relationship with the customers.
So, what should the banks of tomorrow look like? For Robert Anghel, Chief Business Officer at Salt Bank, the Keywords should be “incredibly fast, elastic [referring to adaptability and to a fast-paced work culture], and empathic [in the connection and communication with the customers]”. Kyashi’s founder & CEO Shinichi Takatori highlights the new space the brick-and-mortar branches are beginning to occupy, even for digital-born banks (not unlike what is going on in the world of retail, where physical stores are becoming more and more a place for connection with customers and special events, rather than just a place to sell).
Another key aspect is personalization: for Narumon Chivangkur, Managing Director – Thailand CCO & Banking Head at Citi, “the bank of tomorrow will be your own personal J.A.R.V.I.S.”, referring to the ultra-reliable and smart artificial intelligence created by Marvel’s Tony Stark. Deeply understanding what the customer needs and expects from a financial institution should be leveraged by banks, who have the data and the resources to offer the best products – and beyond that, the best financial education and counseling – to each customer.
For Fluid AI’s co-founder & Managing Director Raghav Aggarwal, rather than planning or imagining where you want your company to be in 5-10 years, you should ask yourself: where is your customer going to be in 5-10 years?
The potential of emerging markets
Throughout Money 20/20 Asia, the event’s organizers mentioned how Bangkok was chosen to host the event due to its bustling, highly innovative technological landscape. And Thailand is not alone as an emerging market with a relevant fintech scene.
For Dmytro Kolechko, CEO at Wing Bank, emerging markets sometimes are “much more advanced than established economies” – take Brazil, for example, with the massive success of instant payment Pix, which became a global case for user adoption, scalability, and UX.
Besides the innovation itself, in emerging markets, fintech plays a leading role in supporting financial inclusion. On the other hand, the infrastructure must support adoption: without reliable and affordable smartphones and mobile internet, for example, instant payments and mobile money would not go too far.
Money 20/20 Asia 2025 stood out with its mature discussions about regulation, innovation, fraud prevention, and other challenges and opportunities that coexist within the ever-rising fintech industry worldwide. Another important topic, as you have seen, was the potential of emerging markets.
On that note, if you want to strengthen or start a presence in Latin America, PagSeguro’s cross-border payment solution allows you to offer over 140 payment methods in 17 Latam countries – including the region’s main markets, Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Chile, and Peru. You can also count on our expertise of more than 20 years in Latin America, and our deep understanding of how the customers from each of its countries prefer to shop and pay online. To talk directly to our team about how we can help your business, click below to contact us:
