In the ever-evolving landscape of e-commerce, technological advancements have become a driving force reshaping the way businesses operate and consumers shop. At the most recent edition of Seamless Asia, Terrapinn’s Christine Lee delved into the future of payments, banking and e-commerce with eight leaders in their industries.
1. “We envision something more interactive and voice based”
– Sonal Kapoor, Global Chief Commercial Officer, Prodigy Finance
I think, e-commerce has been disrupted time and time again. But I would say that in the last five years, it’s been much more stable. The next wave of disruption that we see is with Chat GPT based models. Up until now the way we’ve been doing e-commerce has been text based or search based, but what we envision in future is something more interactive and voice based. To give an example, imagine you want to basically buy a dress for attending a wedding and you come onto a platform and you go ‘Hey, I’m going to a wedding tomorrow, suggest a dress.’ Imagine if that’s your only interaction and the platform basically shows you an array of options and it’s all interactive.
It’s something that we’ve always envisioned, but it was very hard to pull it off in real time at a cost that is deployable and sustainable. But with Chat GPT, this is exactly what’s going to happen now. Your payments will be voice enabled, your interaction will be more chat enabled so you can envision a new way of commerce and buying stuff now versus what you were doing before so I think it’ll be an interesting couple of years from now.
2. “There is a very clear use case for a 24/7 settlement network”
– Amy Yu, Chief Executive Officer APAC for Seba Bank
I might be a little biased here as I’ve got to put on my crypto hat. I have been in crypto for five years, and I think what’s exciting about this space is there’s always a push to disrupt. I think that in crypto, a lot of people fall back on DeFi but it’s because DeFi is extremely disruptive. It completely changes the USP of centralised providers. I am actually at a centralised provider, and have been for most of my roles in the past.
But it will be interesting to see how DeFi develops as there is still so many pieces of it that probably can’t yet fall into a regulated environment. So I think that, to me, is one of the top disruptive trends for sure. And then in line with this theme is payments. I think there is a very clear use case for a 24/7 settlement network, something that was a given within crypto.
So then when you bring it out into traditional banking, financial services and payments, this is kind of a new concept. At least in one part of the space, the crypto world, it’s a standard offering that, I think soon a lot of the world is going to demand.
3. “It will definitely be a mobile-based disruption”
– Carlo Brillantes, Head of Digital Payments at Foodpanda Philippines
I think in the Philippines, it will continue to be a mobile based disruption. It may be an e-wallet, possibly embedded banking. But at the end of the day, definitely in the Philippines, it will be a mobile-based disruption.
It’s important to remember that in the Philippines, there are around 160 million smartphones. And here’s the clincher. Filipinos spend 32% of their time on their smartphones So most likely, anything that happens down the line in this region will have to be mobile first.
4. “AI will continue to be one of the driving forces”
– Alin Dobrea, Head of Marketing Solutions & Partnerships at Zalora
There are a few disruptive technologies to look out for but I would say one of the key ones is definitely AI. It’s definitely something that’s at the forefront, and everyone’s talking about it and also implementing it. So I would say AI is and will continue to be one of the driving forces in e-commerce and the wider tech industry.
In terms of its applications to e-commerce I would definitely look at customer service, particularly having chat bots, for example, the customer experience, looking at product recommendations and algorithms andoverall, the marketing engagement side of things. So being able to create content and being able to personalize campaigns on a one-to-one level using the power of AI.
5. “In China you are expected to live stream”
– Sheila Berman, End to End Digital Transformation APAC at Brenntag
One of these [disruptions] would probably be live streaming. It’s already massive in China where it is expected that if you’re selling something – a product or a service, you’re expected to live stream. In other parts of Asia it’s still only being used in bits and pieces. You see it in Facebook for small, medium enterprises, but it hasn’t gained traction yet. I’m thinking that in the larger space here in Asia Pacific, that is something that will probably gain traction in the next few years, as more and more people becomecomfortable talking in front of the camera.
6. “We can leverage the tech to strengthen the subscription model”
– Sadira Yeong, Co-Founder and CEO of Scentses & Co.
I think subscription model would definitely be a disruptive tech in the next five years. Why I say so is because one thing I noticed is that over the years many consumers have now shifted from what used to be a very buy and sell kind of movement. Right now it’s a lot more about value creation for the consumer and naturally subscription is something that would leverage on this because subscription is all about leveraging on a compounding relationship with the consumer.
So a question I always ask our team is how do we continue to use tech to also strengthen on this subscription model? And what we see now is we can leverage the tech on AI or even machine learning to further personalise the service so that our customer will not feel that it’s stagnant and it’s only subscription and product. I want to add more value to that.
7. “People will say AI but in the Philippines it’s identity”
– Edmon Joson, Chief Product Officer at Tonik Bank
A lot of people will say AI would be more disruptive or the disruptive technology that would come along. But to be honest with you, in my corner of the world in the Philippines, identity or solutions around identity is going to be more of a disruptor or what we want as a disruptor in the industry.
Right now, we have a lot of challenges in terms of identity. Even though the Central Bank today has launched a national ID, (Check this) it’s still growing, and we’re still trying to find a way to make sure that it’s integrated well into all our financial services. So it’s quite a challenge, and I think we want to have disruptors come in and address our issues on identity.
8. “In the banking industry its AI”
– Henry Aguda, President and CEO of Union Digital Bank
In the banking industry it’s AI. We’ve heard of AI for quite a while, but it’s only now because of recent developments that AI is actually cutting into the mainstream. And I’ll tell you why AI is fantastic. It is not enough for banks right now to understand the customer lifetime value. But with AI right now, we can actually cut through the information and figure out a new term that I call CLP, customer lifetime prosperity. We need to figure out as banking institutions how our business are elevating people’s lives and AI is going to do that for us.
9. “AI is allowing us to process data quicker”
– Tiffany Chng, Co-founder & Marketing Director, cheak
I think it’s definitely the rise of AI. It’s allowing us to process data quicker, offer more personalised recommendations and improve our overall customer experience. It’s more about how can we incorporate it into our company safely. And with regular regulatory policies as well. But it’s definitely here to stay.
