Today, the finance industry is moving towards FinTech. Combining financial services with advanced technology opens doors to innovations that help society overall. Fintech is the future of trade and transaction and is here to stay. With increasing access to the internet and mobility, more people are joining the bandwagon to the future. Joseph Chan, Founder and CEO of AsiaPay, has turned into a leader in the changing times. He introduced AsiaPay to consolidate his expertise and experience in strategic planning, product and project management, and to implement various cutting-edge financial, electronic banking, internet, and mobile product services and systems in Asia to serve the customers’ needs. His exceptional perseverance to get his company off the ground makes him one of the 10 most inspiring business leaders in 2022.
Before founding AsiaPay, Joseph took on various management positions at Barings, Citibank NA, Bank of America, and Dah Sing Bank. In 2000, he started a third-party quality electronic payment, mobile payment solutions, and technology firm in Hong Kong expanding to Asia. He spearheaded the company that offers business strategies and product development with his management team. “My business target then was to become one of the most successful world-class digital payment service and technology companies in Asia,” says Joseph.
Innovative Thinking
As an innovative leader, he understands the need to have a high level of autonomy to keep moving forward. He believes that a leader plays a critical role in championing an innovation project; they need to have the capability to envision the creative possibilities underlying their project and the practical steps to transform these viable opportunities. “The leadership journey is ever-changing, long, challenging, and often requires different skills and qualities at each level. To be successful as a leader, you have to be willing to be vulnerable enough to throw away what worked at the previous level, give up the need to be a hero, and continually learn and develop new skills along the path,” shares Joseph.
Being the CEO of AsiaPay, Joseph has a lot to share with the FinTech industry. He considers himself to be the face of the organization, and as the top man, he has the characteristics to be an inspiration to his employees and others in digital payment. According to Joseph, a true business leader demonstrates perseverance in the face of adversity and overcomes obstacles, especially under current pandemic. It is someone who has strong leadership skills and an unflinching desire and determination to be successful. “They need to balance the concept of effectiveness and efficiency in business plants, to leverage the ever-changing technological trends to keep innovating new products and services. A leader is a person who keeps an open mind to learn from others and gain experience, and embrace changes,” says Joseph Joseph. As a business leader, Joseph believes that a leader also needs to have the ability to be an independent thinker and to take on and manage risks in the face of uncertainty, and always have a mindset that adjusts to the constantly changing demands in this modern generation, along with digital innovation and transformation.
Joseph has always envisioned the day when digitalization and technological innovations will play a more significant role in both FinTech and retail industries. He firmly believes that the future requires contactless seamless payment transactions that would make shoppers complete their purchase in a just few steps across channels and media, via convenient payment methods of consumer choice. This futuristic idea was fuelled by the fluctuating demands of Asian consumers and the growing eBusiness concerns in the region. Considering that the Asia Pacific is a collective of marketable countries with a wide population of digital natives, Joseph managed to bring merchants and consumers the business-suited payment tools and services that are convenient for them in the digital commerce landscape, from web to app, from IOT to Metaverse. Through this, they continue to provide innovative payment technology and gateway that would bring ease, convenient, security and productivity savings in this going cashless generation. AsiaPay leads to take advantage of Asia’s active card penetration and ranking with the highest internet and mobile engagement in the world.
These insights will play a vital role in changing the new-age leaders’ thought processes dynamically. Providing meaningful advice to the young generation of entrepreneurs, he says, “All dreamers encounter constant challenges and dilemmas, be it betting money, capital investment, human resources and even your destiny to flight. In this highly uncertain business environment during a pandemic and ever-changing technological world, perhaps, entrepreneurs could stay calm and be at PEACE always. (‘Passionate; ‘Embrace changes; ‘Agile; ‘Collaborative; and ‘Evolutionary).”
The Debut of FinTech
Joseph started the first high-quality third-party ePayment and payment solutions and technology in 2000 in Hong Kong. Today, he works at AsiaPay Group as their CEO. In 2006, the company was PCI DSS level 1 compliant, one of the earliest PSPs in Asia that achieved a high standard of Data Security for payment processing for over 15 years. On payment authentication, AsiaPay is one of the very few 3D Secure certified vendors in Asia that is compliant with 6 card brands – Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover/Diners, JCB, and CUP for issuing and acquiring banks since 2003. “In addition, we are one of the very few certified vendors that support the latest card tokenization standards of Visa (VTS) and MasterCard (MDES) and 3DS 2,” adds Joseph. Lastly, on risk control and monitoring, AsiaPay offers an advanced anti-fraud processing, multi-level data analytic and reporting tool to merchants.
FinTech can be a very competitive industry, where market competitors are constantly trying to find a way to get ahead. As for AsiaPay, each merchant is valued as a partner who they can support in their business growth. AsiaPay imparts its value propositions to every client that has dealt with its service, from payment to checkout plug-ins, from instalment to voucher and eloyalty processings. By upholding a trusted payment service and technology partner, they ensure that all finances are digital, fast, integrated and secure while providing cost-effective solutions that also gauge savings in productivity and fraudulent payment risks. “With our several integrations and strong connections with eCommerce and FinTech industries, we have extended our top-performing electronic payment gateway to various brands and big banks in Asia,” Joseph says.
Facing Adversities
The pandemic introduced new central challenges for commerce around the world. At AsiaPay, though challenging, they were able to move along with the payment innovations and provide cutting-edge products and services to clients. Ever since the pandemic began, they saw a change in the company’s operations and market needs from then to now. In terms of efficiency, the company leaped to omnichannel payments solutions to support omnichannel commerce and enhanced customer experience, business growth, and gain a competitive edge. Through this, it also got into contactless payment systems and went digital as well as buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) payments. During these uncertain times, they wanted to be more available to their clients and established a quality local client service with round-the-clock technical support to provide secure and reliable digital payment processing. They launched a revamped Merchant Admin Portal to modernize, enhance and simplify the administration experience for valued clients, with advanced data analytical tools. Additionally, they also launched the PayDollar AppPay mobile App, which allows merchants to remotely accept multiple payments through QR codes and payment links with their own smartphone devices, to support merchants to stay on top of marketing trends and optimize sales conversions.
Though these times have proven to be difficult year after year, AsiaPay has strived through it gracefully and sharpened its business skills to give out the best to its clients and stakeholders. Talking about quality, Joseph mentions that they worked to provide robust, high-performance, and resilient digital payment processing services with zero downtime in terms of performance and reliability. When it came to security, they understood that there is no bullet-proof security in digital work, but still enforced the latest card standards and technologies, complied with PCI DSS standards, and continued to engage in new security company partnerships with their advanced value-added security technologies and services.
The Road Ahead
To stay competitive in a highly volatile and fast-growing market, it is imperative to constantly research market needs and develop and improve AsiaPay’s product offerings. To this end, AsiaPay plans to expand and focus more on other distribution channels, digital currencies, reach out to merchants with more aggressive online sales, home delivery, and consumables, plan out a heavier sales and promotional activity on social media, and conduct webinars. Moreover, Asiapay also wants to popularise and launch the Smart Retail Payment Solution PayDollar AppPay and introduce a value-added payment solution like Buy-Now-Pay-Later across Asia with various leading regional and local partners. They also broaden wallet acceptance for digital purchases like GrabPay, LinePay, ApplePay, and SamsungPay, including mobile payment, and have comprehensive real-time data analytical tools for digital merchants.
As the pandemic continues to accelerate global economies towards a cashless future, at AsiaPay, they want to continue to put the best effort to capitalize on the latest digital payment and commerce technologies to generate new values and opportunities for banks and merchants in Asia that enhances customer experience, business growth and competitive edge especially under the current uncertain times. People will continue to use digital payment modes in a post-pandemic era across traditional and new forms of commerce, and AsiaPay will well prepare and move along with this opportunity.
For More Info: https://www.asiapay.com/