What’s it like to be nominated for 5 fintech awards?

We spoke to the chief executive officer to get his thoughts on this incredible achievement

The Asia FinTech Awards are just a matter of weeks away, which means the winners will soon be revealed. Moolahgo, one of Asia’s biggest paytechs, are finalists in five categories. 

Robert Welbourn spoke to John Hakim, Moolahgo’s founder and chief executive officer, about why they entered the awards, how it feels to be in the running for so many trophies, as well as all things payments. 

Hi John! Tell me a little about yourself. 

I’m the founder and chief executive officer of Moolahgo, a tech company based in Singapore and specialising in payments. Before founding Moolahgo I worked in a number of banks: DBS Bank, JP Morgan and Credit Suisse. Starting Moolahgo was a very natural evolution for my career. 

It must have been quite a culture shock to go from working for some of the biggest banks on the continent to founding your own company. 

Culture shock is an understatement! As a founder of a startup company you have to give up the comfort and luxury of a huge organisation where you can tap into the strings of teamwork. With a startup, especially as a founder, you really have to do everything by yourself, especially at the very initial stage. You have to roll up your sleeves and not be afraid to get your hands dirty. That’s the mindset and the model discipline that I still have today. 

Clearly it must be working; you’ve been shortlisted in five categories at the Asia FinTech Awards. 

I’m glad the judges recognise the effort that the entire company has put in. We couldn’t believe it when we first found out. Hopefully we manage to actually bring back some awards! But the whole team definitely deserves this. 

What was it that drove you to enter the awards? 

There are quite a lot of awards these days, but the Asia FinTech Awards is definitely one that we really believe in because they’re prestigious. Last year we were one of the winners, we won the Diversity and Inclusion Award; to be recognised on a platform like the Asia FinTech Awards allows our entire company, the people working in Moolahgo, to really feel proud of being a part of the company. 

One of the areas Moolahgo focuses on is cross-border payments. What are the biggest challenges in cross-border payments right now? 

Number one would definitely be the differences in regulations in different jurisdictions. We know how to actually make it faster and cheaper for clients to send money; clients are always looking for better rates and lower fees, but there’s only so much we can do right now. Being compliant with regulations, not just within our home country of Singapore but also the destination country where we are sending funds, is very important. 

I was reading recently that, particularly in Singapore, a lot of the traditional banks are starting to see fintechs like yourselves as partners rather than rivals. Is that something that you’re experiencing? 

Absolutely, yes. Not just the banks but other fintechs as well. There are a lot of companies that are competitors, but also partners at the same time. I think it’s an ecosystem where we need each other. We definitely need to work very closely with the banks, they’re really good partners for us. And likewise, I think some of the banks see us as a strategic partner and are willing and able to support our growth. 

Do you think the rise of digital currencies like CBDCs will help improve the speed of the cross-border process? 

This is not new; before CBDCs came into the picture, cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, etherium and whatnot were all touted. The blockchain would speed up cross-border payments and remittances, but we haven’t seen these currencies become mainstream. 

We see much more promise in CBDCs in terms of expediting cross-border transactions. But I think it all depends on the use case. Not every cross-border transaction needs to be supported by a CBDC or is effective using CBDCs. Use cases with conditions that are more stringent that need to be met before the release of funds are more suitable for CBDC-backed cross-border transactions. Things like trade financing related payments or government payouts for social and welfare purposes would benefit from CDBCs, which would expedite the transactions. 

Of the use cases we’ve got so far, do you think they’re promising? 

I think so. Singapore is running quite a number of projects with their Central Bank counterparts from other countries, and we’ve seen good success. But in terms of retail CBDCs, I think the verdict is still out. We’ll have to wait and see how that can actually evolve into kind of a more mainstream use case. 

Do you think there’s an issue with CBDCs where governments are pressing ahead with them, but actually consumers aren’t as interested as the governments think they might be? 

You may be right; CBDCs are top-down; they’re a government initiative. The take-up in my opinion is going to be driven by the initiatives that are rolled out by the government. 

In the context of Singapore, money is already pretty digitised. We can survive without having the need to touch physical cash. Retail CBDCs are just another version of digital money and the take-up is going be defined by government initiatives, in my opinion. 

We’re all constantly working to make the payments process more frictionless, but is there a risk that it might become too frictionless and that some companies might not be doing proper AML checks? 

I wouldn’t say that it would ever be completely frictionless. It would only ever reach the point of being truly frictionless if you were to disregard all the necessary checks that are required. If you’re a licensed company, there’s a certain level of checks that you need to put in place to make sure that you rule out money laundering. 

It’s always very difficult for a payment service company like ours to balance. On the one hand, we have consumers that are always demanding faster, better, and cheaper payment options. But on the other hand, we have to make sure that we fulfil our regulatory duties as a licensed company. I don’t ever imagine the payments process becoming truly frictionless; not for Moolahgo at least. 

Is AI something that you’re looking to use at Moolahgo? 

We’re big believers in AI; it’s going to fundamentally change everything. The first thing that comes to mind is customer service, as well as some compliance-related processes. 

We strongly believe that AI can help a great deal when it comes to payments. Our pilot AI project last year conceptualised an AI assistant to execute real time cross-border transactions using generative AI. That was fresh in the market at that time, and we’ve continued to build on it. 

The AI project that we’ve rolled out this year is targeted at B2B customers; last year we targeted the consumer space, but this year it’s the business segment. We believe this new pilot project is going to deliver a lot of benefits to our corporate clients. A lot of our corporate clients are business owners and finance professionals who are incredibly busy. With our AI solution they can ask the assistant a lot of business-related questions and get the answers very fast, just by texting. Things like getting an insight on past transaction history and then comparing that to the current market conditions, for example; our AI payment co-pilot will be able to assist with that. 

Moolahgo are shortlisted in five categories at the Asia FinTech Awards; visit the awards website to see which categories and who they’re up against.

Image: Moolahgo

Robert Welbourn Robert Welbourn is an experienced financial writer. He has worked for a number of high street banks and trading platforms. He's also a published author and freelance writer and editor.