Steve Pannifer, Senior Vice President of Digital Identity at Fime, summarizes the key insights and discussions from Money 20/20 Asia in Bangkok, Thailand – a prominent event that brings together the Asia-Pacific payments ecosystem to delve into the latest opportunities within the industry.
One of the main themes at Money 20/20 Asia this year was "Trust in the Future of Finance". It is an important topic. Many of the pain points in the digital economy are related to trust, not least the rampant fraud occurring within an ever-increasing number of digital spaces such as social media. People get scammed because they trust people who they shouldn't. The internet is over 30 years old and yet it still has no trust layer. This is essentially the problem that digital identity is trying to solve.
Alongside colleagues from Fime and Consult Hyperion, I was delighted to be able to contribute to a number of trust related sessions at the event:
Building Digital Trust with Modern Identity Security and Orchestration.
Navigating Compliance and Security in Digital Identity.
Selling to Robots: The Digital Identity Imperative in Agentic Commerce.
Brainstorm: Building Trust with AI in Digital Identity.
It Takes a Village - Making Digital Identity Work.
Your Face Becomes Your Wallet of Everything: Personalization vs Security.
Here are some of my key takeaways:
More friction does not necessarily mean more security.
I've sometimes heard it said that people are lazy when it comes to online security, and it is this that results in them not taking the steps necessary to protect themselves online. I'm sure there is some truth in that, but I also believe a big part of the problem is to do with the ways systems are designed. If we put a lot of friction into the customer experience, that will also encourage poor behavior. For example, asking a customer for a memorable word is a terrible idea. They will inevitably choose something so obvious that the smallest amount of social engineering will reveal it.
Building a good customer experience is an essential part of creating a trusted service - a point that Linden Dawson, Senior Product Manager of Customer Digital Identity at National Australia Bank (NAB), made during the session "Building Digital Trust with Modern Identity Security and Orchestration". It's not that we need to design services with no friction. Some friction can be reassuring to customers and is an important element of building trust.
Regulation needs to address the root cause.
In the same session, Natalie Reed, Director at Deloitte, described Australia as the “scam capital of the world”. I think the UK could give Australia a run for its money. Her point was that it is out of control. This report, published by the United Nations’ Office on Drugs and Crime in April 2025, highlights the level of industrialization of the scam business, which employ "multi-lingual workforces comprised of hundreds of thousands of trafficked victims and complicit individuals". From centers in Southeast Asia and beyond, transnational organized crime is able to target victims across the world.
In some countries (like the UK) regulators are trying to address the scam issue by making the banks pick up the tab but this does little to address the root cause. It does not stop the activity of scammers. Neither does it encourage people to make sure they can trust the person to whom they are sending money. One glimmer of hope, as Natalie explained, is the new scams prevention framework in Australia which places some responsibility on the social media platforms, where many scams originate. We will have to wait to see how far the regulator can go in holding social media platforms to account.
Trust is needed across the whole lifecycle.
Too often the trust conversation has been focused on onboarding, ignoring the need for trust through the whole customer lifecycle - a point well made by Ian Sorbello, Principal Solutions Architect at Transmit Security, in the session on "Navigating Compliance and Security in Digital Identity". Those initial checks are important but unless they are linked to strong authentication and fraud checks, weaknesses will be exploited and trust will be lost.
Anoosh Arevshatian, Chief Product Officer at Zodia Custody, took this a step further, explaining the connection between digital identity and digital assets. Ultimately digital identity boils down to the private keys under the control of the user (but likely managed by a custodian). The binding of the corresponding public keys to digital assets establishes ownership. Protecting those keys through the customer lifecycle is essential for customers to be able to trust that their assets are safe.
Trust is about to get a lot more complicated.
In their session "Selling to Robots: The Digital Identity Imperative in Agentic Commerce", Dave Birch, Global Ambassador at Consult Hyperion, Consulting by Fime and Victoria Richardson, Partner at ID Partners, highlighted how agentic AI will dramatically change the relationship between organizations and their customers. For example, AI agents will help customers find the best deals, switching as needed - meaning that businesses will no longer be able to rely on customer inertia.
Customers will of course need to trust AI agents to use them. But as Dave and Victoria explained, organizations will need to trust agents too. A key question will be whether organizations will even know that they are dealing with agents rather than actual customers?
Several emerging AI agents use screen scraping to access services through the same interface as human customers, making it difficult to distinguish between the customer and their AI agent. Frameworks such as the Model Context Protocol (MCP), which is seeking to standardize how AI agents access data sources, may help. By giving agents a different end-point to the human customer, organizations will have a better chance of working out what or who they are interacting with.
The technology and standards to deliver trusted digital identities exist. These can address the issues of fraud, friction, inclusion and privacy we see all around us today. The task of building a trusted internet may be complex, requiring the commitment of many stakeholders but it is not unachievable. Examples around the world have shown that with the right incentives, real progress can be made - the key point from my session.
Stay ahead of key market trends.
Attending conferences such as Money 20/20 Asia allows us to keep our finger on the pulse of the key challenges and opportunities faced by each player in the market. It isn’t just the main conference programme that offers these insights; it’s getting the chance to speak directly with the banks, merchants, and service providers that operate within each region and finding out what matters most to them. Trust remains the cornerstone of a secure digital future. Events like Money 20/20 Asia show us that while the challenges are complex, the solutions are within reach – if we work together.
Learn more about Fime’s expertise across the digital identity ecosystem.
