Payments in Asia | Monica Jasuja | DigFin VOX Ep. 51

Monica Jasuja is an engineer and product manager who has led payments teams at PayPal, Mastercard, GoTo and elsewhere. She is one of the most knowledgeable people in the region when it comes to fintech.

Jasuja speaks with Jame DiBiasio about the key trends in the post-Covid era. Her analysis is balanced, noting the failure by many fintechs, banks, and governments to change consumer habits away from cash. On the other hand she discusses where she sees great potential for uptake.

As she goes through changing business models, Jasuja also touches on the implications for valuing fintech startups, lessons from China, and the foundational importance in Southeast and South Asia of government initiatives for financial inclusion.

• Timecodes:
• 0:00 – Monica Jasuja and her career
• 2:58 – Challenges in Southeast Asia for super-app models
• 4:53 – The enduring use of cash, the limits of financial inclusion, how to change habits, and how to get users to pay for services
• 7:51 – Creating sustainable fintech businesses, the changing business playbook, reassessing a product’s value post-Covid
• 11:07 – What makes a product successful, Asia’s peculiar needs, neobanking in Asia, identifying the right problems to solve
• 14:24 – The essential role of government in Southeast Asia fintech, digital literacy, how to grow consumer spending
• 18:01 – Financial literacy, gamification, knowing customers, why UPI hasn’t grown faster, reaching beyond top-tier cities
• 21:52 – Lessons from China, what works and what doesn’t, why Southeast Asia is different
• 25:02 – How to value tech companies, rethinking how we fund startups
• 27:48 – Are CBDCs relevant? Finding use cases, integrating the region’s domestic payment systems, benefits for business users