The first time I heard about Open Banking was in 2015 when the EU rolled out guidelines for the Second Payment Services Directive (PSD2). Many years have passed since, but Open Banking has just recently been implemented in certain parts of Southeast Asia.

This article is meant to shed light on developments in Open Banking in Southeast Asia from the point-of-view of regulators, banks, and startups.

The lists are by no means exhaustive so please feel free to give me a shout if there are new pieces of information that I should incorporate. If you’re already familiar with Open Banking, please feel free to skip the first section.

Open Banking refers to when banks allow third parties to access their customer data in order to read the data and provide additional financial services using that data or to perform transactions on the customer’s behalf. The underlying idea of Open Banking is that customers are the owner of transaction data, not banks, thus, data should be shared if the customers wish to do so.

The data access and exchange take place through Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), software links that allow secure, rapid, and dependable communication directly between two firms. If this sounds alien to you, think about a restaurant reservation application that has Google Maps embedded into it. APIs allow external applications to read data from Google and portray the data on their own applications.

Also Read: Why banks will benefit from open API

While there’s consensus that Open Banking should bring about innovation in financial services which – in theory – should benefit end consumers, determining how ‘open’ banks should be is a contentious issue. Banks have been reluctant to share customer data as they view such data to be their source of competitive advantage, enabling them to provide customised services to customers and prevent competitors from stealing the customers.

To put things into perspective, if two competing banks have the same set of customer’s financial data, they could compete for loans by offering more competitive interest rates. Therefore, allowing other entities to access customer data means banks will face heightened competition and risk losing the customer.

This is where regulations come in. Open Banking has been pushed forward by regulators of leading financial systems, including the EU, the UK, and Australia, because regulators view that the sharing of data will level the playing field for fintech players, increase customers’ access to financial services, and enhance financial innovation.

Approaches to Open Banking vary across countries, and so does the scope of implementation. Australia, the EU, and the UK have chosen a regulatory-driven approach, while others have chosen a market-driven approach.

Southeast Asia’s open banking landscape

In Southeast Asia, Open Banking is still in a nascent stage with regulators opting for a ‘market-driven’ approach. Banks are free to pursue Open Banking as they wish. By letting banks take a lead role in designing and implementing Open Banking, different banks opt to use different technical standards for their APIs.

Also Read: Temasek, Tencent inject US$35M into open-banking software company TrueLayer

This means that third parties that want to connect with banks would need to slowly integrate with one bank at a time and follow different standards or protocols, resulting in a lot of inefficiencies for both banks and third parties.

Some central banks, such as Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia, foresee this problem and have proactively launched ‘soft guidelines’ or ‘API standards’ for banks to follow if they wish to open up.

Other central banks, such as Thailand, the Philippines, and Vietnam, have not launched any guidelines or reveal their strategies on Open Banking.

Nonetheless, these central banks have rolled out payment transformation initiatives, which means that Open Banking could be next on the policy agenda.

While regulators have done an incredible job at setting implementation guidelines, more can be done. Because Open Banking is, in essence, the sharing of customer’s sensitive data, regulators have a crucial role in screening third parties who can connect with banks and access such data.

For example, the UK and the EU stipulate that third- party providers (TPP) must be registered and approved by the regulators. This has a few benefits. First, it ensures that customer data will be treated properly.

Second, this would free up banks from having to screen TPP, streamline the partner onboarding process, and reduce the bank’s liability since banks are no longer liable if they engage with inappropriate TPP or if TPP mishandles customer data. By regulating TPP, regulators can reap the benefits of Open Banking, while ensuring customer protection and bank adoption.

Also Read: Survey: Filipinos are more open to creating bank accounts via smartphones compared to foreigners

Although regulators are not stepping in to push Open Banking adoption, banks across the region have launched a public API portal, allowing third parties to connect with them and make use of customer data. However, the extent of openness varies widely.

Some of the popular APIs available among banks in Southeast Asia are bank product data, account status, payments, and cards. On the other hand, transaction data, loan origination, account opening/closing, customer reference, and authentication are harder to find.

More importantly, the process of on-boarding API partners vastly differs from bank to bank with a majority still require lengthy paperwork and manual on-boarding process. Say, a payment provider wants to connect with three banks in Thailand, it would have to approach each bank individually and file different sets of paperwork, a process which could take months.

This opens up an opportunity for API startups, such as Brankas, to serve as a middleman and handle local complexity so that any companies can make payments, transfers, and access customer account information without having to directly engage with banks.

Also Read: 4 ways the banking sector can respond to the digital transformation

It aims to be an API infrastructure that helps banks turn their legacy systems into APIs, and in turn, serve as a unified platform for third parties to connect with banks.

So far, Brankas has worked with leading banks, such as UnionBank in the Philippines and the top three banks in Indonesia, to create API portals and onboard payment partners.

Open Banking APIs from Banks

Startups in Open Banking

Few startups are operating in the Open Banking space in Southeast Asia with a majority being payment providers (PISP) because there is clear regulatory or licensing requirement for payment providers, however, other types of services are lacking. Part of the reason might be due to the inconsistency in Open Banking adoption among banks.

For example, startups that want to become an Account Aggregator (AISP) would need to be able to access and display customer data from all banks. However, to date, only nine banks – out of hundreds of banks in the region – allow third parties to access customer data.

Here is the list of Southeast Asia-based companies working on Open Banking:

Open Banking might be a hard pill to swallow, but it can bring about many benefits that are met with today’s financial system, including improving customers’ financial health by allowing them to view their financials in one place, to gain insights on their spending habits, to make payments efficiently from one place, etcetera.

Also Read: Is Japan ready for the digital banking revolution?

To realise this vision, participation from regulators, banks, and startups is a requirement rather than a nice-to-have.

This post first appeared on www.nattariya.com.

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A major crisis can either incapacitate your company’s ability to market itself, or present opportunities for your brand to thrive.

At the time of writing, several global brands have already declared bankruptcy or significantly downsized their business, including Hertz, Singapore-based oil trading company Hin Leong and WeWork, with more companies expected to follow suit, even as countries are looking to re-boot financial activities after months of lockdowns or social restrictions.

With so much uncertainty and a gloomy outlook that’s likely to last over the next few quarters of 2020, should you continue with your marketing activities, and how do you keep your audience engaged during these difficult times?

The marketing paradox: Damned if you do, damned if you don’t

Marketing is necessary for any business to flourish, yet we all know that marketing budgets are also among the hardest to justify, and especially during the current business climate, many business owners would tend to see marketing activities as luxuries as they actively seek out ways to reduce spending.

Companies are not only cutting back on marketing – in some cases, they are actually laying off their marketing teams.

Also Read: Customer is not always the king, says Tokopedia’s customer engagement expert

On the other hand, as business owners, we all know we can’t stay “quiet” for long, especially in today’s content-rich and social media-driven marketplace where your brand is likely to be forgotten when you adopt conservative strategies.

According to a recent study in May 2020 by the American Association of Advertising Agencies, 43 per cent of consumers found it reassuring to hear from their favourite brands, while 56 per cent said they like to learn how brands are helping their communities during the pandemic.

Only 15 per cent of respondents said they would not want to hear from companies at all.

What this means is that, contrary to what many of us would imagine, it actually makes more sense to increase – not decrease – marketing spend during this period if you do not want to lag behind your competition when business activities pick up again.

So how then should you approach your marketing and branding during and in the aftermath of COVID-19?

Focus on interaction with customers, not pushing products

Even as the economy reopens, remember that months of stringent social and movement restrictions coupled with gloomy economic and employment outlooks have left their mark on the psyche of your customers. The next few months or even years ahead are going to be difficult for many people, especially with the prospect of more job losses looming in the horizon.

Also Read: Is virtual reality the next big marketing channel?

It is, therefore, necessary to understand that while we are anxious to restart our business activities, we need to balance off our marketing and sales efforts with exercising empathy for customers.

Empathy is the ability to understand and feel another person’s emotions, and it becomes even more critical as we interact with customers during such difficult times. Being overly pushy with trying to get people to notice your products immediately in the aftermath of a particularly trying period is very often not the best approach in building trust.

In a post-coronavirus business environment, having an omnichannel strategy becomes even more important when interacting with customers. While multichannel marketing only looks at creating as many channels as possible to connect with customers, omnichannel adds a dimension of ensuring the user experience regardless of the chosen channel is consistent so as to truly personalise interactions with customers.

Reassure customers with your brand

Every brand seeks to add value to its target market; the most successful brands are those that connect on so many emotive points with their customers that they remain assured (and hence loyal) to the brand even in challenging times. Such was the case for recently-bankrupted Gold’s Gym – the long-standing delivery of its brand promise to keep members fit and healthy allows it to still retain a loyal following even as the brand’s future remains uncertain.

It is important for companies and businesses to try to provide an assurance to both existing and potential customers that they will still deliver on their brand promise and value proposition even during difficult times.

While it’s true that consumers are more conservative in their spending during this time, it would be a mistake to think you have to keep talking about cost-savings for those who use your product or service. Highlight the strength and unique characteristics of your brand instead of just trying to justify your pricing or how much of a “good value for money” you are.

Work your CRM

If you are looking at using multiple channels to reach out to the market, you might consider switching to a more robust Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform. CRM allows you to gather useful data and analytics that provide you information like where your customers are coming from, who is likely to purchase your products and services, customer lifecycle, and help you keep track of your marketing campaigns.

In a post-coronavirus era, a credible CRM system is like a marketing multi-tool for you to gain massive outreach: you can segment your client base into distinct categories and take advantage of built-in features like emails, customised messages, send out event invites and a whole lot more to deliver the omnichannel-optimised user experience.

Don’t promote fear

The last thing anyone needs right now are brands taking advantage of fear and panic to promote their products and services. Fear is never a good motivator, and while you want greater brand visibility, you do not want to create negative associations with your brand name.

Also Read: The only customer engagement strategy businesses need during a crisis

What you really should be focused on is telling your audience why they should take proactive positive measures to cope better with the tough times, not tell them about the dire consequences of not using your product. We talked about empathy early on, and you will miss out on opportunities to build genuine connections with your customers when the focus is on using fear to motivate people to make a purchase.

Review your product offering

With a gloomy economic outlook ahead, consumers are likely to focus on purchasing essentials rather than spend money on luxury goods and services. You have to, therefore, target the essential product segment and come up with a brand narrative that fits that picture.

For instance, you may have a brand that deals exclusively with high-performance one-on-one coaching with clients. This may be a good time to consider introducing a range of functional fitness training programmes that can cater to the needs of a wider audience. Doing so does not necessarily dilute your brand identity – it just makes your brand more accessible to a larger audience with a different goal or need.

Focus on the longevity of your branding

Brand longevity is really about ensuring how you can remain relevant to the market in different circumstances. The current chatter is focused on dealing with health- and economic-related issues – any brand that talks about these issues will, therefore, gain visibility quickly; yet to skew your entire marketing and branding angle to what’s relevant now would be short-sighted.

You need to look at angles that allow you to build new narratives and pivot quickly to remain relevant to your audience when circumstances change.

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Severan Rault, whose past experiences as an engineer include leadership roles at Amazon and Microsoft, has been appointed as new CTO for Southeast Asian tech unicorn gojek.

Rault will oversee all of the technology behind gojek’s ecosystem -which provides access to a wide range of services from transportation and payments to food delivery, logistics and several other on-demand services- and manage the company’s engineering teams across Southeast Asia and India.

gojek’s official statement notes that Rault brings to over 20 years of experience in software engineering, with roles that included leading a team that founded Amazon Prime Air, the company’s drone delivery service; leading architect of Microsoft’s web search engine, Bing; as well as a stint as Principal Development Manager for Microsoft OneApp, a software application that enables feature phones.

Rault himself is also a serial entrepreneur who was credited for the founding of wireless solutions firm Kikker Interactive, which was acquired by Microsoft in 2008. He was also the brain behind the establishment of virtual reality company Betawave, at which he worked before moving to gojek.

Also Read: (Exclusive) Group CTO Ajey Gore leaves gojek

Earlier this year, Rault joined gojek as Head of Engineering for the company’s marketplace platform, before assuming Group CTO responsibilities from Ajey Gore, who left the company recently.

He will report to gojek co-CEO, Kevin Aluwi.

“It is a time like no other at gojek. The company is entering a critical phase as it moves from startup to maturation and it’s special to be a part of that. Building systems and processes for a business of gojek’s scale and complexity is a challenge one rarely enjoys in their career and I’m grateful for the opportunity,” said Rault.

Last month, e27 reported that Gore has announced his departure after serving the tech giant for about six years.

Gore joined the on-demand multi-service company in mid-2015 as Head of Engineering in its Bangalore office before being promoted to the position of CTO in January 2016. Gore stated personal break to focus on family time and health as the reason behind his decision to leave the unicorn company.

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Image Credit: gojek

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Insider, a multichannel growth management platform, announced today it has secured US$32 million in Series C funding round, led by US-based VC firm Riverwood Capital.

Sequoia India, MENA-focused investment firm Wamda, and US-based Endeavor Catalyst also joined the round, bringing the Singaporean firm’s total financing raised to date to US$47 million.

The company will use the additional capital to improve its platform, expand its R&D team, and also for global sales and marketing efforts.

Founded in 2012, Insider’s AI-powered platform enables enterprise marketers to connect customer data across channels and systems, predict their future behaviour with an AI-powered intent engine, and orchestrate and deliver individualised experiences to customers.

Also Read: gojek names Severan Rault as new CTO

The platform claims to be offering a wide set of product features in the market while coordinating all offline and online data across the unified platform and its various engagement channels.

The company says its AI intent engine consists of 15-plus algorithms that enable marketers to make precise predictions, such as which customer segments are likely to convert, buy and churn — and then design optimised experiences accordingly.

Ultimately, Insider enables digital marketers to drive growth across channels, and throughout the funnel from acquisition to activation, revenue and retention — thereby impacting ROI metrics such as conversion rate, CAC, LTV, and average order value.

Insider currently serves 800 global enterprise brands, including UNIQLO, Singapore Airlines, Marks & Spencer, Estée Lauder, Virgin, Samsung, Carrefour, Dominos, Toyota, Newsweek, Avon, MediaMarkt, AVIS, Allianz, BBVA, IKEA and CNN.

CEO and Co-founder Hande Cilingir said: “So far, we’ve focused on leading in high-potential markets in the Eastern part of the world. We plan to grow substantially in our existing 24 countries and we are now ready to enter the US market and believe that our fresh solutions to marketers’ biggest pain points will be a major differentiator.”

Also Read: Can SEA’s proptech come back to its pre-COVID-19 glory? Experts speak

Insider is a heavily women-led organisation with 50 per cent of top executives in the company, including the CEO, CMO, CFO, and CPO being women. It has offices in London, Paris, Singapore, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Seoul, Sydney, Helsinki, Barcelona, Dubai, Moscow, Warsaw, Taipei, Jakarta, Manila, Wellington, Istanbul, Kiev, Ho Chi Minh City, Bangkok, Brussels, Amsterdam, Luxemburg, Ankara, and Kuala Lumpur.

Currently, Insider employs more than 550 people across 24 countries worldwide.

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Circles.Life launches eSIM

The story: Singapore’s digital telco Circles.Life has launched eSIM. Anyone can sign up for an eSIM online without needing to wait for a physical SIM or offline verification by a third party.

What is eSIM?: The new product allows users to toggle between their physical and eSIM accounts, giving them the option of a secondary line for either work or personal use, along with the best data plan.

Circles.Life eSIMs are compatible with any existing physical SIM or can be used to activate a phone line on a new device that does not already have an existing physical SIM.

The product offers virtual activation via facial recognition and MyInfo integration.

eBay launches e-commerce accelerator

The story: eBay has launched Global 24/7, an e-commerce accelerator programme specifically designed to help Singapore’s SMEs leverage the e-commerce major’s platform for global export.

What is it?: The programme provides startup incentives, necessary tools, trainings, and assistance for business owners to tap into eBay’s global marketplace of over 174 million active buyers.

It is extended to markets across the Southeast Asia region which includes Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Malaysia.

When?: The programme will run from 1 July to 31 December 2020.

Who are eligible?: SMEs that have an existing business but do not have an eBay store are eligible to apply for this programme. This includes large and small businesses across the value chain — from manufacturers to dealers to retailers.

Tezos Combinator demo day to showcase 8 projects

The story: Tezos Combinator, an early-stage blockchain incubator from Korea’s TZ Ventures, will hold its hybrid demo day on July 22.

Through this initiative, TZV believes that “real use cases of blockchain will emerge at a large scale”.

Who are the programme’s partners?: Du capital, KK Fund and Broadone Capital.

Which are the SEA startups attending the programme?

GIZTIX (Thailand): A platform for trucks that enables real-time tracking of shipments

Med247 (Vietnam): A healthcare app that uses blockchain to give patients access to their entire medical history and securely stores its data

Olim Planet (Korea/Vietnam): A VR/AR immersive content company for real estate, shopping and exhibitions which utilises blockchain to make transactions more efficient and transparent

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Image Credit: Circles.Life

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