‍Anthony Man joined BVNK in May as General Manager for APAC, bringing with him two decades of experience in payments and financial services. Most recently, Anthony led expansion and commercial teams in Asia for cross-border heavyweight Currencycloud. In this post, Anthony talks about applying for a license in Singapore, our plans to expand in the region and building a new kind of payments network.

Since joining BVNK in May, I've seen firsthand the incredible potential ahead of us for expanding into the Asia-Pacific region (APAC). 

For several years now, BVNK has been working with international merchants, helping them to send and receive payments in APAC local currencies easily, using our Global Settlement Network and distributed ledger technology (DLT). 

The demand from consumers and businesses in APAC to use cryptocurrencies and blockchain payments is significant. The top 2 countries in Chainalysis’ 2022 Global Crypto Adoption Index are APAC markets – Vietnam and Philippines – while Thailand, India, Pakistan, Nepal and Indonesia also make it into the top 20. It’s no coincidence that these markets also have some form of local currency restrictions, a young demographic and/or low banking and card penetration rates.

Even in the more mature demographic markets in East Asia, there is considerable interest and use of cryptocurrencies and DLT payments, along with digital wallets and other alternative payment methods, because of the benefits they offer both consumers and merchants.

In areas like remittances meanwhile, the Asia Pacific region remains in close competition with Europe as the top remittance receiver with around 40% of flows.  

As we build out our local team, operations and products in APAC, we’ll be even better placed to meet the fast-growing needs of our B2C and B2B customers based here.

A new chapter of global growth

This is a new chapter of global growth for BVNK in the fastest-growing region for payments globally. In March, BVNK Co-founder Chris Harmse moved to Singapore to kick off our expansion in the region and last month I joined him and the team here.

Singapore is known for its thriving fintech ecosystem and robust regulatory framework, making it an ideal hub for us to develop our payment products and expand. We’re also looking forward to getting more closely involved with the growth and development of the local fintech landscape.

It’s been an eventful first month. In line with BVNK’s values of acting with speed and integrity, we reached a significant milestone in May – submitting our application to the Singapore regulators, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), for our Major Payment Institution (MPI) license.  

This is an important first step in building out our APAC headquarters in Singapore, and a strong signal of our intent to expand across the region. Over the next 12 months, we plan to apply for local licenses in a number of APAC markets to build on our existing EMI and VASP licenses in the UK and Europe. 

I’m excited about what we can do to make our APAC customers’ lives easier. I’ve been working in fintech and financial services in Asia for some years now and I’ve seen a lot of innovation in the space, including greater accessibility, digital and mobile wallets and real-time payments. 

But many of these innovations are still built on top of long-standing payment networks, like Swift and the card schemes.

BVNK is building a different kind of network. We’re combining traditional payments infrastructure with distributed ledger technology (DLT) to create modern rails for moving money. For our customers that means they can send, receive and convert traditional and digital currencies seamlessly, across more than 61 currencies. 

I’m thrilled to join the team of entrepreneurs, innovators and experts at BVNK, as we build out our operations in APAC.

To find out more about BVNK services in APAC, get in touch with our team