In recent years, digital payment solutions such as e-wallets over mobile devices have emerged, and nowhere is this more obvious than in Asia. From 2015 to 2016, non4 . cash transactions in developed Asia-Pacific grew by 8.8% while that in Emerging Asia experienced 28.6% growth1. Digital payments in Asia are forecasted to grow annually at 16.4% 2 to reach over USD 2.5 trillion per year in 2022. That is almost half of the estimated worldwide total of USD 5.4 trillion. 5. Such services are often offered by non-banks, increasing the number of payments being handled outside the traditional banking system. EY and DBS3 found that payments and remittances were the highest-adopted FinTech services among banking and financial services customers in Asia, reaching 40% in China and 20% in India. In ASEAN, approximately one-third of FinTech companies are in the payments space, and this increases to 54% if you include money-transfer and remittance services4. These innovations did not come about by chance, but rather through a confluence of three factors: 6.  a. Technology has lowered the barrier to entry to run a standalone payments business, without being a bank. b. The high penetration of smart phones running apps has made it easier to acquire customers 1/6  BIS central bankers' speeches  digitally, without physical places of business; and c. The boom of online e-commerce has necessitated the creation of solutions to help customers to pay digitally for services that they in turn purchase digitally.
Because they are so closely linked to monetary policy, they had shown signs of almost full integration right after the introduction of the euro. But with the crisis, a degree of re-segmentation took place again along national borders; and the Eurosystem had to step in to take on the intermediation role that these markets play in normal times. Another set of issues relate to banking. Banks expanded both across borders and financial sectors, often combing commercial banking, investment banking and insurance business in one and the same group. The two groups whose CEOs are in the panel are clear examples of this evolution. But cross-border integration of rules and prudentials, including the institutional framework, has not proceeded with the same speed and there continue to be clear differences according to the activity type. Banking consolidation also raises sensitive moral hazard and crisis management questions, as painfully illustrated by the crisis. The securities markets showed strong growth in the years before the crisis and clear signs of integration, though not to the same extent as observed in the euro money markets. With the crisis, bond price indictors showed signs of more dispersion across countries in Europe, but the question is whether this points to more segmented markets or rather increased risk awareness on the part of investors. Very topical in this respect is also the CDS market and its interaction with the underlying (sovereign) bond market. Finally, the integration of a securities market depends to a large extent on the integration of the supporting market infrastructure.