Fintech’s next frontier? Inclusion, not just innovation, says one fintech giant

The rise of digital tools has opened global markets to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Continuous cross-sector innovation will be needed to protect and enhance that access amid rising global volatilities, said Ant International CEO Peng Yang.

Yang noted that SMEs still face the greatest barriers when crossing borders, especially when it comes to financing and keeping up with new technologies. 

Solutions that can bridge this gap can give SMEs, whom he calls a “real driver of economic growth”, “the same global reach once reserved for multinationals”.

“It’s not only about SMEs doing global commerce, but also bringing global consumers to the doorsteps of local mom-and-pop stores,” he added, noting that SMEs drive regional and global commerce as well as uplift communities and livelihoods.

Singapore-headquartered Ant International, spun off last year from Ant Group, serves over 100 million small businesses, as well as global banks and merchants, across its four business pillars:

• Global wallet gateway Alipay+;
• Merchant payment and digitalisation services provider Antom; 
• Embedded finance, which includes global digital lending service Bettr and a blockchain-based treasury management platform; and 
• WorldFirst, a cross-border digital payment and account service for SMEs.

Expanding access

Since 2023, Ant International has rolled out multiple payment initiatives to connect merchants to global customers. 

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These include partnerships with payment providers and governments that, for example, enable users of South Korea’s Kakao Pay, Hong Kong’s AlipayHK and the Philippines’ GCash to tap to pay via near-field communication, through a partnership with Mastercard. 

Users of SGQR and DuitNow – Singapore and Malaysia’s national QR code standards respectively – can accept cross-border payments via Alipay+ partners by scanning QR codes. 

By the first year of its PayNet partnership, over 80 per cent of inbound QR payments to Malaysia came from Alipay+. Malaysian SMEs charted a sixfold year-on-year growth in December 2024, added Yang. PayNet is the operator of DuitNow.

Meanwhile, cross-border transactions in Singapore made through Ant International’s Alipay+ international payment partners on SGQR nearly doubled in the first half of 2025 compared with the same period in 2024. “This means that travellers coming to Singapore, even those from Europe, are visiting small shops and hawkers, and using mobile payments at places that they previously had to use cash,” Yang said.

Beyond this, Ant International’s partnerships with e-commerce marketplaces, suppliers and banks via WorldFirst enables SMEs to simplify and save on international payments, while its partnership with global infrastructure for financial communications Swift enables payments to be sent from bank accounts to digital wallets.

Yang predicts that the industry will see ecosystems converge within digital wallets, with more services built into these platforms. He cited examples like TNG eWallet in Malaysia, GCash in the Philippines and TrueMoney in Thailand, which “make e-wallets an indispensable part of life for many across South-east Asia”.

Smaller businesses, for whom traditional payment solutions like card terminals can be “costly and prohibitive”, will benefit from this move.

Harnessing tech

As innovation accelerates, Yang believes there will be increased collaboration between public and private players to bridge infrastructure, ecosystems and communities. 

“If different types of fintech players can work together instead of competing with each other, we will create much greater value than working separately,” he added.

Of particular importance is artificial intelligence (AI), which Yang describes as “the invisible hands shaping the future of commerce”. Ant International has developed a suite of solutions for SMEs, including:

• Ant International’s Credit Engine, an AI-powered credit engine that helps lenders make quicker credit decisions;
• Antom Copilot, an AI tool that recommends localised payment methods in new markets and quickly integrates these into a business’ system;
• An AI foreign exchange (FX) solution that helps businesses better predict FX demand and exposure, minimising markups; and
• Alipay+ GenAI Cockpit, an “AI-as-a-Service” platform that enables fintech firms and super apps to build “AI-native” financial services.

The growth of AI has also brought more sophisticated fraud and scams, he warned. Ant International has identified over 150 types of attacks aimed at account enrolment, which are driven by deepfakes – AI-generated images or videos used by fraudsters to impersonate real people.

To combat this, the fintech giant launched the Digital Wallet Guardian Partnership in September in collaboration with digital wallet providers like TNG Digital in Malaysia and AlipayHK in Hong Kong. 

The goal is to leverage technologies including AI to strengthen its collective payments security, share best practices and equip consumers and merchants with knowledge to protect themselves, said Yang.

The company unveiled a toolkit, AI Shield, earlier this year that it says reduces the service risks of AI-powered financial services by 90 per cent. 

The bridging efforts will only continue, the CEO assures. “South-east Asia leads the world in putting SMEs first in their national digitalisation agenda. In this unique collaborative ecosystem, the fintech industry has an extraordinary opportunity to develop AI-driven digital tools for small businesses to build resilience and new growth engines for this region and beyond.”

This was produced in partnership with the Monetary Authority of Singapore and the Global Finance & Technology Network.

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