Executive Spotlight: Exploring the Digital Payment Landscape with AsiaPay

This September, Gazet International started their journey with podcasts. The podcast has been named “Industrial Insights Unveiled” which will be hosted by our chief editor and on each episode, we will be joined by guest speakers who are the experts in Business, Finance, Banking, Technology, Investment and related industries. On our first episode, our guest speaker was respected Mr. Loo Tak Kheong, Country Head (Malaysia) and Director of AsiaPay.

AsiaPay is a leading digital payment service provider across the Asia Pacific region. In this interview, we have unveiled insights that revolve around the operations, challenges and opportunities in the digital payment landscape.

Introduction and Industry Overview

1. Can you provide an overview about AsiaPay’s journey and its mission in the digital payment industry?

AsiaPay stands as the leading digital Payment solutions and technology vendor that has been operating across the Asia Pacific since 2000. Its company’s vision primarily relies on e-commerce businesses or rather cashless payments which includes “tap to pay” solutions to the merchants, and to banks that are in need of a trusted payment gateway that also provides alternative payment methods.

AsiaPay offers its variety of award-winning payment solutions that are multi-currency, multi-lingual, multi-card and multi-channel, along with its advanced fraud detection and management solutions. Hence, AsiaPay aims to bring fast, digital, secure and convenient cashless transactions all over the world.

2. Can you tell us about the specific roles you perform as the Country Head, Director at AsiaPay?

- Strategizing and Plan, develop, implement and execute the organization’s business direction as well as operational function to optimize performance.

- Driving profitability.

- Expanding the company.

- Managing company organizational structure, strategy.

- Communicating with partners & stakeholders.

- Mentor and interact with members of staff at all levels to foster growth and encourage development among the senior executive team and all members of staff.

Industry Insights

3. Since the birth of AsiaPay, how has the digital payment landscape evolved? What trends do you see that can shape AsiaPay’s future?

AsiaPay believes that digitalization is key to the future of payments. We aim to impart our advanced technology and services to the businesses and promote contactless payments in other parts of Asia. Contactless payment adoption continues to climb especially during COVID to reduce risk of handling card and cash, MasterCard has witnessed a surge of 40% in contactless payments in the first quarter of 2022. In China the highest adoption rate where e-wallet purchases were 23% higher than that of cash purchases. Contactless payment technology continues to evolve to meet consumer demand and address convenience, security concerns. The trends would be:

- More adoption of biometric authentication

-“POS-less”: customer pays directly at APP without going to POS nor being a NFC transaction. Nevertheless the “tap to pay” solution also allows and caters to f2f payments for Merchants that requires it.

- Digital wallet in IOT

- Support and fuel Web 3.0 as contactless payment method as well in near future

- Non-Bank FIs plays an important part to enable / facilitate the adoption of contactless payment

Innovation and Solution

4. Can you highlight some of the innovative payment solutions that AsiaPay offers to businesses and organizations?

On the technology side and being a certified 3D-Secure vendor ACS - access control server/MPI (merchant plug-in), they offer their valued bank and payment platform clients an array of prevailing checkout platform plug-ins, customized ePayment solution platforms especially on payment gateway and anti-fraud, ACS/MPI, tokenization, DCC/MCP, eWallet, Mobile Payment & etc., as well customized integration and development services for valued merchants.

5. How does AsiaPay ensure the security and reliability of its payment processing services, especially in the face of growing cybersecurity threats?

- Reduce Fraud on Payment Transactions - AsiaPay verifies transactions with risk-based analytics to help stop fraud before it happens.

- Enhance Shopping Experience for CustomersEnhance trust and confidence for online shopping

- Increase Business Conversion Rate - Reduce shopping cart abandonment with a more secure and seamless checkout process. We have partnered with strategic partners, ie; Shopify, woocommerce, Magento, Siteminder & etc.

- Merchants Gain Business Insights - Issuers gain greater visibility into cardholder activity to help spot consumer trends. We allow issuers to monitor transactions as well.

Regional Impact

6. Could you tell us about the challenges and opportunities that AsiaPay is presented with, as it holds a strong presence in the Asia Pacific region?

Challenges:

- Globalization, big data, mobile internet, new technology trend as the pandemic continues to accelerate global economies towards a cashless future

- From business side: Compliance/ consumer behavior/ product needs/ competition from the West / financial risks/ ROI

- From technical side: Security / regulations/ scalability / integration/ technology risks / access to expertise

- With that, at AsiaPay we have:

1. Positive/ focus/ flexibility/proactivity and organizational skills

2. Agility / vision/ trust / credibility

Opportunity :

- Following China’s lead, digital wallets are growing fast across APAC

- The rest of APAC is catching up to China’s lead in digital wallet adoption

- Emerging economies lead regional e-commerce growth India and Southeast Asia will see APAC’s strongest e-commerce growth through 2026

- Buy now pay later is seeing big gains in e-commerce (BNPL accounted for over $100 billion of APAC’s e-commerce)

- Cash continues to decline rapidly at POS The decline of cash has accelerated due in large part to the proliferation of QR codes

- Real-time payments are driving adoption of A2A in APAC account-to-account (A2A) payments and cross-border commerce is emerging as a global leader in real-time payments

- APAC consumers are a new generation of young, tech-savvy individuals who are inspiring innovative products and services. They enjoy and drive the convenience of shopping online or offline. Conversational/Chat commerce; live streaming commerce

- Cross-border e-commerce / digital n social commerce / payment

- Evolvement of Digital Banking intended to enhance banking experience of Millennial

7. How does AsiaPay personalize its services to meet the diverse needs of businesses across different countries and cultures?

To help our business partners grow their business online by providing innovative, secure and cost-effective solutions that will make them competitive in the e-commerce landscape. We encourage its merchants to bring this secure payment platform to their e-commerce stores and be able to offer premier payment methods to their users. Our other services include:

- VAS

- Anti-fraud and Security (Anti-fraud/ Customized Payment Page/ Member Payment/ Card Tokenization / VTS)

- Processing (AppPay/ PayBooth/ Payment Link/ QR Code/ Recurring Payment/ Batch Payment/ Voucher Payment/ Event Payment/ API/SDK Library)

- On-Us Processing (Instalment Payment/ Card Promotion Discount/ Loyalty Point Redemption)

- Module (Shopping Cart/ Hotel Reservation System/ Event Enrolment System)

- Big Data (Payment Analyser)

- Regional (Multi-Currency Processing /DCC & MCP/ Multi-Lever Report)

Cross Border Transaction:

8. Cross-border transactions have become essential for global businesses. How does AsiaPay facilitate seamless and secure cross-border payments?

In the e-commerce world, it is already borderless. Whereby if the merchants are able to accept cards from various payment schemes i.e.; Visa / MasterCard / unionpay / discover / diners / JCB… the merchant can accept those Payments cards across the border, globally. Hence, whether by accepting local cards or foreign cards, the same standards of security should apply to mitigate the risk of fraud. We also have Anti-fraud and Security (Anti-fraud/ Card Tokenization / VTS / Mdes) 3ds OTP authentication – liability shift. On the technology side and being a certified 3D-Secure vendor ACS - access control server/ MPI (merchant plug-in), we offer our valued bank and payment platform clients an array of prevailing checkout platform plug-ins, customized e-Payment solution platforms especially on payment gateway and anti-fraud, ACS/MPI, tokenization, DCC/ MCP, e-Wallet, Mobile Payment & etc., as well customized integration and development services for valued merchants.

E-Commerce and Business Enablement:

9. E-Commerce has grown significantly. What are the methods that AsiaPay implements to contribute to the growth of online businesses, especially start-ups and small enterprises?

AsiaPay assists and supports merchants in integrating the payment gateways to the acquirers. This is because AsiaPay has already integrated with multiple acquirers, not only in Malaysia but also across Asian regions which will allow the merchants to grow with us, regionally. With regards to that:

- Making a payment is an important part of the overall customer experience and you can use that process as a means to differentiate your business.

- Optimizing online payment experience to increase checkout conversion

- Optimizing local payment methods to a mobile environment

- Improving the mobile-friendliness of our site, with clear and attractive visuals, and smoother navigation. Personalizing their experience at all touchpoints such as with recommendations of solutions or products as per customers’ interests and by sending personalized messages.

- Leveraging customer data appropriately by explicit segmentation of customer profiles and standardization of the data-gathering process across all channels.

- Improving our response times for customer queries when they populate through any of the channels. Engaging and addressing all customer queries through live chat, intelligent chatbots, or interactive discussion forums.

- Providing transparency and reassurance about security

10. What advice do you have for businesses looking to integrate AsiaPay’s payment solutions into their online platforms?

The merchants tech developers will only need to integrate with our API (application programming interface), thereafter, AsiaPay will take it from there connecting to the preferred Acquirer. It is digitally simple. For eCommerce or retail, the future is digital.

Partnerships and Collaborations:

11. Could you share some examples of AsiaPay’s successful collaborations with financial institutions (FIs) and businesses, and their impact?

We add value to the FIs or Payment Partners / Schemes by addressing their pain-points, executing the technical part of things i.e., integrating to the merchants, offering multiple payment acceptance methods, dashboard reporting, operation & support & etc..

Enhancing systems for the FIs is very costly and hence, engaging a Tech partner like Asiapay will address these pain-points not only from the cost perspective but also on the technicality perspective as well..

“At Canadia Bank, we continue to leverage technology, invest in digital initiatives, and seek innovative ideas for the customers’ convenience. We are delighted and excited to collaborate with AsiaPay to strengthen the digital payment capabilities of our merchant partners. In return, it will provide more convenience to the individual customers, who are the end users, as they will be able to pay in simple, secure, and convenient manner.” he said.

To the businesses / merchants:

David Chen, CEO of Atome, said: “Now, more than ever, consumers want flexibility, transparency and a better, more personalized shopping and payment experience. This exciting partnership with AsiaPay will support thousands of businesses across the region in enabling a superior, seamless checkout experience for consumers, both in store and online websites. This in turn will Optimize Customer conversion, increase average orders and repeat usage.”

Bradley Haines, Regional Vice President of Asia Pacific at SiteMinder, says, “Hotels today are chal- lenged to keep up with the latest consumer demands, behaviours and expectations. Additionally, this year has given rise to booking cancellations and the need for online security like never before. Through our partnership with AsiaPay, our hotel customers can offer greater choice to their guests, so they can increase booking conversions online and save time by not having to manage payments manually onsite. By receiving payments upfront, hotels also have a greater ability to create contactless check-in experiences.”

Regulations and Compliances:

12. The payment industry is subject to regulations. How does AsiaPay stay compliant with various regulations while operating across different jurisdictions?

We work very closely with the Central Banks i.e.; Bank Negara Malaysia and we are licensed to perform our business as a Payment Gateway provider. Hence, we are consistently being audited by the regulators to ensure that we are comply & certified with the standards of security i.e. PCIDSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard).

So In terms security, We also work very closely with Visa & Mastercard to provide the tokenization services i.e.; VTS (Visa Token Service) & Mdes (Mastercard Digital Enablement Service) to ensure tighter security on the card’s PAN (primary account number) number to prevent fraudulent

Future Outlook

13. What can be expected from AsiaPay in terms of future innovations, expansion plans, or new services?

AsiaPay will continue to support partners in growing their online business by providing innovative, secure, and cost-effective solutions to be industry and future-ready with digitalization and technological innovations taking over the economic sector of the world.

We will continually embrace change and innovate capitalizing on the technological trends and strength especially addressing the coming evolution of digital commerce, IOT, mobility, adoption of AI, payment data analytics and blockchain technologies

On top of our existing 16 country operation in Asia, we will continue to expand our footprint in the world to expand our payment solution and service coverage, and further scale out and build stronger business partnerships.

Our Innovation and adjustment strategies are:

• Open API for easy integration process

• Tokenization

• Smart POS – Tap to Pay solution

• Biometric recognition

• KYC – Merchant e-On boarding

• Authentication 3D Secure 2.0

• Crypto/ Blockchain

• Big data

• Artificial intelligence

• Chatbot

Customer Engagement

14. Can you share any customer success stories that showcase the impact of AsiaPay’s services?

Eastin Hotel Group IT manager: “Previously we were using different gateways, but then we switched to AsiaPay, AsiaPay offers multiple cards and other comprehensive payment methods with multi- lingual and multi-channel payment processing solution, besides, it has an advanced fraud detection and payment management solution. L’occitane Finance manager” Our Company has been using digital payment services since 2014, so it’s already been 9 years, using digital payment will increase our sales, customers can pay us anytime in any way, we are pleased with AsiaPay’s high-quality service, and their support team is very helpful.

Personal Perspective

15. Could you share some insights from your personal experience about working in the digital payment industry and contributing to AsiaPay’s growth?

In AsiaPay, we have a presence across the region which has enabled many payment methods to support the merchants to grow regionally. We believe in nurturing or supporting the merchants to grow in the e-commerce space and addressing their pain-points by customizing solutions they need. Likewise, the same objectives and direction for AP to support our partner Banks in providing white-label payment gateways and enabling more e-commerce merchants for the Banks.

16. What advice do you have for businesses, especially start-ups and SMEs, looking to adopt online payment solutions and enhance their digital presence?

1) Transformation and upgrading of digital innovation changes the way we live and do business.

2) Business innovation through Digital Payments is to provide good, safe and secure customer experience.

17. AsiaPay was awarded for being the “Most Advanced Payment Service Provider -Malaysia 2023” in the annual Gazet International Award 2023. How does it feel to be recognized for your achievements in the field of ever growing digital payment landscape? What advice would you give to aspiring professionals who aim to achieve similar recognition and success in their careers or projects?

Having the privilege to receive recognition from the annual Gazet International Award is an overwhelming honour. This banking finance award category is aligned with our vision for market expansion to further deliver cross-border e-commerce convenience, not just in neighbouring regions in Asia. In this technological age, we can testify that striving for globalization, digitization and building a wide range of partnerships can lead to all kinds of business success.

It is my great privilege to receive such a prestigious award. Definitely a strong endorsement for us to recognize our efforts in supporting Malaysia’s businesses particularly in innovation. This will further boost AP’s firm commitment to support the continued demand in Malaysia.

My advice to my fellow awardees is to strive harder in this industry. With the latest acknowledgement added to our businesses’ credentials and expertise, a reliable & credible performance as well as reputation is important for each of our respective companies. As for the start-ups, for now, breaking in the market is what fuels your businesses but offering innovative technology and solutions that can serve both retailers and buyers would be more needed in the long run. In building a business, you may encounter shortcomings but having a goal-driven mindset can lead you to greater success.

So let’s embrace change and digital innovation for the future.