I was in a flight from Miri to KL yesterday and saw a short write-up in the travel 3Sixty° magazine about South East Asia becoming a cashless hub but I think it lack something pretty important. There was no mention about how blockchain technology & cryptocurrency is going to affect the cashless movement.
South East Asia is becoming a cashless hub because many large corporations in the region have started the use of ewallets for processing payments. One of the latest additions in this lineup is the Uber’s contract with MoMo wallet to ease the customers to pay for rides.
Momo wallet is popular in Vietnam, while people in China are using wechat pay and Alipay. In Malaysia, CIMB bank is following the trend and offers CIMB Pay as a solution for cashless payment for merchant and users.
But most of these mobile wallets share one thing in common; you need to have a debit card or at least a bank account in order to use them. South East Asia is one of the regions where there are many people who are either unbanked. This means that most of the people in this part of the world do not own bank accounts. This causes a great hurdle in processing payments for various purposes.
The development in FinTech with implementation of blockchain technology for online payment systems across the globe is going to change that. Blockchain technology is bringing a great revolution in the region and will play a vital role in making it a cashless hub. Mobile wallets for cryptocurrency like Blockchain, Jaxx and Coinomi are making it possible for the unbanked to spend their money online and buy things using their smartphones.
Mobile wallets like Jaxx make it easier for everyone to make payment and send money to family using their smartphones while in the same time saving money from paying high fees to remittance service like Western Union and Money Gram.
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I believe we will see mobile wallets for cryptocurrencies becoming a major trend if there is proper KYC and AML implementation in place so that it will be safe for people to do peer to peer cryptocurrency transaction locally.
I can’t wait to see the day when we can scan a QR code and use Ethereum to buy my flight ticket or nasi lemak!