Payments, global trade head for digital ‘tipping point’ as coronavirus pandemic forces shift in business environment

Global trade has entered a new era where the digital economy is going to be the centre of the world’s economic structure, online forum hears

Regulatory changes needed to keep pace with new digital adoption, panellists say

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Digital payments have reached a ‘tipping point’ as a result of the challenges created by the coronavirus pandemic, say experts. Photo: Shutterstock

Published: 3:28pm, 2 Sep 2020Updated: 10:27pm, 2 Sep 2020

Digitisation in payments and global trade has reached a “tipping point” as a result of the challenges created by the coronavirus pandemic, creating a new level of comfort and trust in digitally driven transactions, according to a panel of fintech experts.

Global trade has entered a new era where the digital economy is going to be the centre of the world’s economic structure, according to Jack Zhang, chief executive and co-founder of Tencent Holdings-backed payments operator Airwallex.

Airwallex saw usage by its customers jump by 53 per cent in the second quarter from the first, with some of its e-commerce customers experiencing 200 per cent growth in the April-May time frame, Zhang said. Seventy-five per cent of its customers who responded to a recent survey plan to continue to use the digital channel post-pandemic, he said.

“The speed of e-commerce is being accelerated – probably what happened in a decade happened in a couple of months,” Zhang said.

Zhang was one of the speakers at “Digital Trade in a Post-COVID World”, a virtual briefing organised by the South China Morning Post and the World Economic Forum on Wednesday.

Some industries, however, have not experienced the same growth, because the pandemic cut into their operations and consumer demand, Zhang said. Revenue from customers in the travel industry fell by 85 per cent quarter-on-quarter and international student tuition payments dropped by 40 per cent in the period.