Thursday, April 25 2024 | ASIA TODAY INTERNATIONAL - Reporting the Business that Matters in Asia
AT SOME point, the RMB will be ‘solidly number four’ as the fourth most commonly used currency in global interbank settlements, overtaking Japan, says SWIFT Chief Executive, Gottfried Leibbrandt . . .
THE concept of crowdfunding is new, and businesses need to be educated that funding is available from alternative sources, but in the UK, where government regulators are moving to effectively support the industry’s expansion, some expect turnover to reach £5 million this year and up to £8 billion in 2016 . . .
TODAY’s cyber tools are more sinister, and a family of spyware and spynets has been upgraded to specifically target a financial institution or groups of institutions in a particular geographic area. Microsoft’s Richard Boscovich explains how the industry is fighting back . . .
ASEAN regional payments integration would drive competitiveness and deliver economic growth and productivity improvements . . .
BANKING is going to be ruled by a gang of four – banks, retailers, telecommunications and tech companies, says Rajashekara Maiya, Associate Vice President and Head of Product Strategy of Infosys Finnacle. But rather than fearing the newcomers, be believes banks should be partnering and creating co-operation with fintech. Banks will retain their core competence in the manufacturing of products and risk management . . .
ASIA’s demographics — an average age of 28 compared to 36 in the US and 39 in Europe — will drive its growth in coming decades as youthful dynamism transforms the region, says Piyush Gupta, Chief Executive of Southeast Asia’s largest bank, DBS . . .
THE concept of an ASEAN Troika to facilitate the process of achieving consensus is now embedded in what is known as ASEAN Vision 2025 . . .
ASEAN needs to have a clearer direction of how to engage with the private sector and to align investment from non-ASEAN countries with development plans at both sub-region and regional level, says a Singapore think-tank report. Some believe it could take 10-15 years for the AEC’s potential to be achieved . . .
The US retail chain Walmart Stores, Inc the world’s largest company by revenue, has maneouvred into the driver’s seat of China’s burgeoning e-commerce market.
Walmart now owns one of China’s three largest e-commerce portals, Yihaodian.com (YHD.com), which enjoys annual double-digit growth, and in 2014, turned over US$1.9 billion.
Walmart first invested in YHD.com in 2011 after it decided to abandon its own plan to run a website in China. The US retail giant lifted its stake in YHD.com to 51 per cent in 2012, and in July this year acquired the remaining 49 per cent from Ping An Insurance and the founders of the website — former Chairman, Yu Gang, and former CEO, Liu Junling.
THE last decade was the golden decade for e-commerce – the next decade will be the diamond decade for cross-border e-commerce, says Maggie Zhou, Director of the International B2C Division of Alibaba.
The group has just announced plans to invest US$1 billion in cloud computing globally . . .
THE EU has led the world in collecting VAT on all online sales, adopting a mechanism which is now part of the OECD’s Base Erosion Profit Sharing (BEPS) project. The OECD’s Raffaele Russo explains how regulators are moving to capture profits hidden in borderless trade . . .
POST OFFICES are becoming natural partners to SMEs because of their huge distribution networks through 650,000 outlets, and an ability to offer complementary business services. The Universal Postal Union is about to roll out an escrow account to help SME e-merchants . . .
IN A TOXIC internet environment, valuable services are being forced behind castles and fortresses – it is no longer an open Internet because, suddenly, the entry price is the price of the fortress, says leading scientist Geoff Huston . . .
ISSUES arising from the shift to a fully-digitised world affect all levels of Government and are beyond the jurisdiction of a single Government department, says the OECD’s Anne Carblanc. “We believe the cross-Government approach is absolutely necessary,” she told ATI ...
THE changes wrought by ICT and the way the global economy works have not been properly captured by official data on GDP and inflation, says economist Stephen Jen . . .
GLOBALLY, the value of e-commerce reached US$15.2 trillion in 2012-13, and countries need to adopt laws to facilitate this, at a domestic,
regional and international level, says UNCTAD’s Head of ICT analysis, Torbjorn Fredrikssen. Currently, he says, there is no answer to such issues as data protection involving the use of cloud services . . .