Leading representatives from industry, government and business recently attended a Payments Roundtable at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Secretariat in Singapore on July 29.

The roundtable, titled “Asia Pacific Payments and e-Commerce”, included discussion focusing on future of payments, as well as whether there should be payments harmonization. The roundtable was addressed by Dr Alan Bollard, Executive Director of the APEC Secretariat followed by a keynote address by Rohan Mahadevan, Vice President of PayPal Asia.

Rohan’s keynote focused on the rapid change of payments, its move towards customer experience, as well as specific examples where payments harmonization would improve efficiencies and productivity such as authentication, financial inclusion and a risk based approach to regulation.

Other panellists at the roundtable included representatives from: Asian Development Bank; APEC’s Electronic Commerce Steering Group; Singapore Post; Conference of Asia Pacific Express Carriers (CAPEC); The Association of Crypto-Currency Enterprises, among others.

The Asian Development Bank Institute report says a country’s payments costs (in ASEAN) can be 3% of Gross Domestic Product GDP, and if there is a if there is a shift from fully paper based to fully electronic based payment system, cost savings at 1% of GDP can be realized.