OCBC Launches Instant Transfers to WeChat & Alipay

Hey Payments Fanatic!

OCBC Bank is the first bank in the Asia Pacific region to enable instant money transfers to WeChat Pay and Alipay users in China. Imagine cutting down on the usual 2-5 day wait—now, with Visa Direct integration in the OCBC mobile app, customers can send funds in seconds!

This move couldn't come at a better time. With a 50% surge in remittances from Singapore to China, driven by a wave of individuals moving from China to Singapore, the demand for fast, secure, and hassle-free cross-border payments is at an all-time high.

Sunny Quek , OCBC's Head of Global Consumer Financial Services, shared, “Our wider goal is to become the go-to app for cross-border transactions in Greater China, ASEAN, and even globally.” OCBC’s users can now send up to CNY 50,000 daily and CNY 300,000 annually with just the recipient's China ID name and mobile number—and it’s all free of charge.

And the future looks even brighter: OCBC plans to expand its reach by 2026, including digital wallets like GoPay, Ovo, GCash, PayMaya, and Coins.

Keep reading more payments news below, enjoy your weekend, I'll be back on Monday.

Cheers,

Marcel

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INSIGHTS

?? Explore Worldpay's "Global Payments Report - How Consumer Choice is Changing Commerce" to see how consumer preferences are evolving into trends and what these trends mean for the future of businesses. Get the full report here

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GOLDEN NUGGET

The Open Banking Era in Payments.

Let’s drive in:

Today, in 2024, still most transactions happen using Cash or Cards.

The card schemes, Visa and Mastercard have been controlling the payment realm for decades as card transactions run on their network.

?? Open Banking disrupts that.

With access to payments data, Banks (Chase, Monzo Bank) and Payment Service Providers (Nuvei, Adyen) and 3rd-party providers (Plaid, Tink) can disrupt the traditional card payment model and cut out intermediaries by settling directly from the consumers bank account to the Merchants.

Before Open Banking became available, consumer financial data was controlled by big banks.

Now, consumers can manage their financial information and access it across different platforms — receiving a smoother, more personalized experience in the process.

Open banking uses Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) which are software intermediaries that let two programs communicate with each other.

While there are risks of using open banking platforms, APIs provide a measure of safety when sharing financial information.

Once a 3rd-party provider receives the data from your bank, it can use the information to offer you personalized solutions.

Apps like MINT aggregate your data using open banking APIs, which consumers consent to when accepting the T&Cs.

From a Merchant perspective, this will:

? Reduce fraud tremendously by making sure the funds are available

? Increase margins by cutting out the middle-man (one less fee).

? Improve conversion rates while improving the customer experience.

? Enhance security related to Payments for their consumers

Etc.

Other organizations such as Thunes are leveraging that same Open API through a collaboration with TrueLayer to create an agnostic payment network that connects consumers to banks, merchants, digital wallets and neobanks.

Open API’s will ultimately enable more FinTech services to be offered seamlessly.

I highly recommend the complete deep dive article by Konsentus & my partner at Connecting the dots in payments... , Arthur Bedel ?? ?? ??

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