Author

About the Author
Rachel is a science and business journalist from New Zealand, writing and podcasting about technology, banking and climate change. As a foreign correspondent, her career has spanned the Middle East, South Asia and the Horn of Africa. Rachel has interviewed Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, politicians and Egyptian revolutionaries, Middle Eastern billionaires, Australian business leaders and former Philippines President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. She is the Host of Breaking Banks Asia and Co-founder of Soundcraft Media.

Episode 30: How to get people to switch from cash to digital 

Sometimes it takes out of the box thinking to get people to make the move from cash to digital money.  And if there is one person who has had to think deeply around this issue, it’s Jojo Malolos, currently the CEO of Philippines payment service PayMongo and before that founded digital bank GoTyme. But so…

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Episode 29: Hot takes from Money20/20 Asia 

The team from Breaking Banks Asia meet forward thinkers to sum up last week’s Money 20/20 Asia conference with a focus on the investment outlook for startups and fintechs, the key themes coming out of the conference and how banks and their competitors are teaming up to innovate. Guests: – Scarlett Sieber, Chief Strategy and Growth Officer…

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Episode 27: “Don’t be a dick” 

Debanking is a real problem for fintechs operating in Australia. Local companies and foreign intrants alike are not immune to a 30-minutes-to-midnight text saying “your accounts will be closed from tomorrow”.  Stuart Stoyan, founder of Moneyplace and former chair of Fintech Australia, is in no mood for making nice after five years of inaction from…

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Episode 26: What will kill cash?

In Part 1 of this two-part show we explore the resilience of cash for payments. From cards and digital wallets to superapps and digital currency, we ask the experts what’s the killer app to kill cash in Asia, and what would mass uptake of global digital payments mean for financial inclusion in our region. Guests: Anthony…

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Episode 25: Untangling Filipinos’ complicated financial lives 

There’s a story told by the World Bank that in 2009 more people in the Philippines had a mobile phone than a bank account – despite there still being some 450 rural banks alone in the country. Today, that story might be apocryphal and it also doesn’t mean Filipinos don’t have incredibly complex financial lives…

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Episode 24: Who guards bankingland’s walled garden? These guys 

Regtech is the unloved tech cousin of the fintech world. It’s the one which follows the rules and makes sure everyone else does too. But in an industry where not following the rules leads to some of the most spectacular catastrophes in history, it’s no surprise that it’s a sector on the rise — how…

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Episode 23: Will banking as a service trump core banking?

Banks replacing their core banking has been likened to ‘doing brain surgery with a spoon’ and there are plenty of public examples where the surgery partly or completely failed.Is Banking As A Service a new pathway for banks struggling with aging core banking platforms? We speak with Sachin Sharma, chief product and commercial officer at…

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Episode 22: Orwellian dystopia or sci-fi future? Australia grapples with a digital ID 

 A bill to introduce a digital ID is making its way through the Australian Parliament to better protect government-based identities and stem the flow of consumer data from insecure vaults. Bank-based digital identity verifications systems are already operating and international companies are, with government blessings, setting up shop in the country.  But the true question…

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Episode 21: What does 2024 hold for fintech in China? 

2024 is shaping up as the Year of the e-CNY, but can China be trusted with a global reserve CBDC? Our last guest Richard Holden says no. Cashless author Richard Turrin offers a full-throated reply, saying the rise of the digital Yuan is a lack of trust in the US dollar and how the US…

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Episode 18: Standard Chartered CEO Bill Winters on why he loves fintechs

He’s the CEO of one of the world’s biggest banks, but has never been afraid of disrupting the mother ship with digital contenders. In Singapore recently for the fintech festival, we caught up with Standard Chartered CEO Bill Winters for a wide-ranging conversation on why he’s such a fan of fintechs, the bank’s support for…

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Episode 17: You can bank on it: trust and winning customers from incumbent banks

Trust in banks in some markets in the Asia Pacific is at an all time low – so you’d think that would give fintechs and neobanks a red hot chance at stealing main bank customers – think again! In this episode we explore the nuance of trust in digital banking, the relationship between good tech…

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Episode 16: India’s green shadow banking system

India is putting the legal building blocks in place that will create real domestic carbon markets, and it is opening the door for fintechs to begin playing a significant role in fixing the country’s environmental problems. But while the PayUs of India — the country’s largest payments provider — are getting on board by offering…

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