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Winning in APAC: Five Common Mistakes WealthTech Firms Make – and What Actually Works

By Patrick Donaldson, Founder, Mkt Dev APAC with Steven Carroll, Founder, CCAS

After a recent visit to Glasgow and Edinburgh, and a good conversation with Aleks Tomczyk, Chief Executive at FinTech Scotland, it struck me how many fintechs based in Scotland are starting to look seriously at Asia-Pacific (APAC) regional expansion – often with limited on-the-ground experience.  The mistakes I describe below come from what I have watched play out with firms entering APAC from major wealth and financial centres in Europe and North America over the past decade. The patterns are consistent, and the underlying discipline travels.

I have spent close to three decades on both sides of financial technology – eighteen years as a wealth management practitioner at firms like Barclays Wealth (originally at Greig Middleton stockbrokers in Edinburgh), then eleven years on the vendor side at Thomson Reuters, Refinitiv and LSEG, building commercial businesses across APAC. I now run Mkt Dev APAC from Singapore, helping firms from outside the region design and execute the right entry strategy for APAC markets.

My lens is WealthTech, and that is where my direct experience sits. Many of the patterns travel across other fintech verticals – payments, regtech, lending, data – but I will speak to what I know.  This is written for founders and commercial leaders of Scottish WealthTech firms who are starting to take APAC seriously.

Here are the five most common mistakes I see, and the playbook that actually works.

The opportunity is real – but it isn’t free

APAC is the fastest-growing wealth management region in the world. Private capital is flowing into Singapore and Hong Kong at scale, family offices are multiplying, and the region’s private banks and wealth platforms are investing heavily in technology to serve an increasingly sophisticated client base. The numbers vary by report, but the direction of travel is unambiguous.

That opportunity has also drawn a lot of entrants. Many of them will fail. Not because the market rejects them – because they arrived with the wrong plan.

From Edinburgh or London, it is tempting to see “APAC” as one more region on the sales dashboard. On the ground, it behaves like multiple distinct markets that reward discipline and punish generic expansion.

Common mistake #1: Treating APAC as a single market

APAC isn’t a country and it doesn’t behave as a single go-to-market region. Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, Australia, Thailand and Malaysia all have different regulators, different buyer cultures and different languages. A playbook that works in Singapore won’t land in Tokyo. A distribution partner who opens doors in Hong Kong may have no relevant network in Kuala Lumpur.

The firms that win pick a beachhead – usually Singapore, for reasons I’ll come to – prove the model, then expand. The firms that fail hire a “VP APAC” and set them loose on a map.

Common mistake #2: Selling instead of listening

Too many WealthTech firms arrive in APAC with a deck and a demo. They assume the product that’s selling well in London or New York will translate, and that the job is to pitch it harder.

It won’t, and it isn’t.

The most effective first move for any senior leader entering APAC is to come and listen. Meet the buyers – the heads of technology at the private banks, the CIOs at the External Asset Managers (EAMs), the principals of the family offices, the heads of digital at the regional challengers – and ask them what their actual problems are before you tell them what you sell. Most of what’s needed to win comes out of those conversations. It isn’t expensive; it just requires discipline.

Common mistake #3: Hiring a Head of APAC too early – or managing it remotely from London or New York

These are two sides of the same mistake, and I see both regularly.

Hiring a “Head of APAC” as your first move commits you to £280-320k all-in before you know whether the market wants your product. It’s the wrong sequence. Start with an advisory relationship – someone who knows the buyers, understands the regulation, and can get you ten qualified meetings in ninety days. Validate product-market fit first, then hire to scale what’s working.The other side of the same coin: trying to run APAC from London or New York. You can’t. The time zones don’t work, the cultural distance is real, and the buyers here know when they’re dealing with a part-time effort. If APAC matters, it needs real local presence. If it doesn’t matter enough to fund that, don’t start.

Common mistake #4: Misreading the APAC buying culture

Two features of the APAC buying culture differ meaningfully from the UK and European pattern, and firms that miss them stall.

First, conflict-of-interest sensitivity runs higher than most vendors expect. Post the 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) scandal and under active MAS (Monetary Authority of Singapore) scrutiny, APAC private banks and family offices are genuinely wary of arrangements that blur commercial incentives. Transparent, independent fee structures – advisory retainers, project-based pricing, introduction fees – land better than opaque commission-linked models.

If your model depends on back-door commissions or informal revenue-sharing, you should assume it will be challenged early in the process.

Second, APAC buyers expect shorter time-to-value. Internal implementation teams at private banks and EAMs tend to be leaner than at their UK equivalents, so plug-and-play integration via APIs matters more than beautifully designed roadmaps. A product that can prove value in a ninety-day pilot gets traction where one that requires a twelve-month implementation programme does not.

For Scottish WealthTech firms, this often means simplifying the initial offer: focus on a sharply defined use case you can implement quickly, then expand once you have proved value.

Common mistake #5: Generic pitching

This sounds obvious but almost nobody does it well. Understand which firms are struggling with which problems before you walk in. A generic “here’s our platform” presentation dies in APAC. A targeted “here’s how we solve the exact issue your Head of Wealth Technology raised at last month’s conference” gets you a second meeting.

The research isn’t hard. Industry events, public filings, LinkedIn activity from senior leaders, regional press coverage – it’s all there. Most firms just don’t do the work.

A word on regulation

Every WealthTech firm entering APAC needs to think carefully about its regulatory posture. The first question is whether you are a vendor selling to regulated firms, or whether your product itself will require licensing. The second is easy to miss: even unregulated vendors carry real regulatory obligations, because their customers are regulated and pass compliance requirements through to suppliers via outsourcing, third-party risk and data rules. MAS in particular has detailed expectations here.

Singapore’s MAS and Hong Kong’s SFC both run sophisticated, generally pro-innovation licensing frameworks covering capital markets services, payment services, digital advisors and fund management. Both regulators are accessible – MAS’s FinTech Innovation Lab and sandbox routes are genuine, and UK firms are welcomed – but neither is a tick-box exercise.

I am not a regulatory specialist, and this is not the place for a rule-by-rule guide. But two practical rules hold: understand which bucket you fall into before you build a market entry plan, and budget time and expertise to get it right.  Getting it wrong can add six to twelve months.

What actually works

The positive version of all of the above is a short, practical playbook:

  • Send your CRO to listen first. Before you hire anyone, before you build a deck, before you commit to a strategy, have your senior commercial leader spend a week in Singapore and Hong Kong meeting buyers. What you hear in those conversations is worth more than any consultant’s report.
  • Start in Singapore. For most B2B WealthTech, it’s the region’s regulated hub, has the highest concentration of private banks, EAMs, family offices and regional headquarters, and is genuinely welcoming to fintech innovation. Use Singapore as your beachhead, not your only market.
  • Budget realistically for the listen-and-validate phase. Between travel, local presence, regulatory work and relationship building, budget £100-250k for the first year of serious effort. This is the phase before a permanent senior hire – the hire itself follows once you have validated product-market fit and know what you are scaling.
  • Use the government support available. Both the Singapore and UK sides offer meaningful market-entry support for fintechs, including grants that can offset a material share of overseas expansion costs. For FinTech Scotland members in particular, it is worth a conversation with both the UK’s trade and investment bodies in Singapore and Singapore’s own enterprise development agencies before you commit capital. This kind of support is not a substitute for commercial discipline – but it can materially reduce the cost of the listen-and-validate phase.
  • Find an APAC market entry consultant. For most Scottish WealthTech firms, the right first step in-region is a specialist market entry consultant rather than a full-time “Head of APAC”. Someone who understands both APAC wealth managers and the vendor landscape can help you avoid obvious missteps, pressure-test your assumptions and quickly tell you whether your product-market fit is realistic.
  • Lead with the augmented-advisor story. The strongest WealthTech narrative in APAC right now is productivity – automating low-value tasks so advisors can focus on high-value relationship work. APAC wealth firms run tight margins; anything that demonstrably improves advisor productivity gets budget approval faster than almost anything else.

Final thought

Winning in APAC isn’t about planting a flag – it’s about building relationships, understanding local nuance, and having the patience and local knowledge to do it right. For WealthTech firms serious about the region, the opportunity is enormous. But so is the cost of getting it wrong.

For FinTech Scotland members, the difference between “we tried Asia once” and a durable APAC business is rarely product. It is sequencing, listening, and committing to a real local presence.

If you’re a FinTech Scotland member thinking about APAC and want to talk it through, the team at FinTech Scotland can make an introduction – or reach me directly. I’m always happy to share a first view.

Patrick Donaldson is the founder of Mkt Dev APAC (https://mktdevapac.com), a WealthTech advisory consultancy helping companies from outside the region enter APAC markets. Based in Singapore, Patrick has close to three decades of experience across wealth management and financial technology, including senior commercial leadership roles at Thomson Reuters, Refinitiv and LSEG.

Steven Carroll is the founder of CCAS (Carroll Consulting and Advisory Services – https://ccas.tech), a specialist consultancy supporting information services and financial services firms on product, sales and marketing strategy. Based in London, Steven and Patrick previously collaborated on Winning in APAC: A WealthTech Perspective, from which this guest blog is adapted.

Remittance Isn’t Broken. The Outcome Is

By Ayodeji Jegede – Co-Founder, MoneyHive

This article represents my independent perspective as a founder, separate from my employed role. It is published by FinTech Scotland, the recognised industry body for Scottish fintech.

For over a decade, remittance has been framed as a problem of efficiency. Faster payments. Lower fees. Better FX. And to a large extent, the industry has delivered. Global remittance flows exceeded $850 billion, with the UK consistently ranking among the top outbound corridors. Yet despite this scale and maturity, the user experience remains fundamentally incomplete. Because the real problem doesn’t sit in the movement of money. It sits in what happens after.

Remittance is rarely the end goal. It is a means to an outcome: rent needs to be paid, school fees need to be settled, electricity needs to be restored, healthcare needs to be delivered. But once money is sent, the system effectively stops. There is no standardised way to confirm that a bill was actually paid, verify that a service was delivered, or track the outcome beyond “delivered.” This creates a structural disconnect between financial infrastructure and real-world execution. The transaction succeeds. The outcome remains uncertain. That gap is where trust erodes.

Why the Current Model Plateaus

The dominant competitive levers in remittance are now commoditised. Speed is near instant. Fees are compressing. FX margins are increasingly transparent. This creates a ceiling. Incremental improvements in these areas no longer translate into meaningful differentiation. More importantly, they do not solve the user’s core anxiety: “Did what I sent actually get done?” This is not a payments problem. It is a completion problem.

The next phase of fintech in this space will not be defined by better rails. It will be defined by what sits on top of them. Three layers are emerging: outcome assurance (systems that confirm completion of the intended action), embedded verification (direct integrations with service providers like utilities, schools and healthcare), and trust as infrastructure (status and proof becoming core product features). This reframes the core question from “Was the payment successful?” to “Was the responsibility fulfilled?”

What We’re Building at MoneyHive

At MoneyHive, we are building around this shift. Not how to move money, but how to ensure money delivers outcomes. This changes product design at a fundamental level: payments become infrastructure not the product, status tracking becomes real‑time and structured, proof of completion becomes a default expectation, and recurring obligations become programmable. The result is not just a financial service. It is a coordination layer between diaspora users and real‑world services back home.

Outside of my employment, MoneyHive has achieved independent validation. We were accepted into Microsoft for Startups, earning $!00,000 in credits (April 2026), a competitive global program. Our application to the FCA Regulatory Sandbox is under assessment with a case officer assigned. We have built an organic waitlist of more than a quarter of 1000 diaspora users from the UK‑Nigeria corridor. MoneyHive is an active member of the FinTech Scotland community and has been accepted into the Techscaler Catalyst programme, a Scottish Government backed accelerator.

Starting in the UK to Nigeria corridor, a few patterns are becoming clear. Users are less sensitive to marginal FX gains than assumed. Visibility consistently outperforms price as a trust driver. Repeat usage is driven by certainty, not convenience. In other words, the strongest retention loop is not “This was cheap and fast.” It is “This worked exactly as expected, and I can rely on it again.” That distinction matters because it defines where long‑term value sits.

Why This Matters for the UK and Scotland

The UK is one of the most important remittance hubs globally, both in volume and diversity of corridors. At the same time, ecosystems like Scotland are increasingly positioning themselves at the intersection of fintech innovation, data infrastructure and cross‑sector collaboration. This creates a unique opportunity because solving for outcomes in remittance is not purely a payments challenge. It requires coordination across financial services, utilities and service providers, identity and verification systems, and regulatory frameworks. This is where ecosystems, not just startups, become critical. The companies that succeed will not operate in isolation. They will plug into networks.

The remittance market is large. But more importantly, it is mis defined. It has been optimised around movement, when it should be optimised around completion. That leaves a significant layer of value unaddressed. The opportunity is not to build another way to send money. It is to build systems that ensure something meaningful happens because of it.

Closing Thought

Remittance has always been framed as a financial transaction. In reality, it is a coordination problem between people, money and outcomes. The industry solved the movement of money. It has not yet solved the delivery of intent. The next generation of fintech companies will. And when they do, the question will no longer be “How fast did the money arrive?” It will be “Did it do what it was supposed to do?” That is where trust is built. And where the next wave of value will come from.

Building societies face growing “Digital Delivery Gap” as member expectations outpace communication infrastructure

New research from Legado highlights structural challenges in communication infrastructure despite rising digital expectations from members

Building societies are facing a growing “Digital Delivery Gap” as member expectations for simple, digital communication continue to rise, while underlying systems and processes struggle to keep pace.

New research from UK fintech Legado highlights a structural challenge across the mutual sector. The Building Society Insight Report 2026 finds that 91% of building societies say their communication systems are not fully integrated with core member platforms, while 73% rely on three or more systems to manage communications.

At the same time, 82% of organisations continue to send more than a quarter of communications by post, and only 18% say members can complete most key actions fully online.

This gap is emerging as member behaviour shifts. 72% of members already use digital platforms to manage their accounts, and 80% would be willing to sign documents digitally if available.

Founder and CEO Josif Grace said:

“Building societies have made strong progress in digital banking, but communication has not evolved at the same pace.

The challenge is no longer digital adoption. It is how communication is delivered. The opportunity now is to simplify that experience and make it consistent for members.”

The research also highlights the impact on member experience. 22% of members say they have been unsure whether their building society received or processed a document they sent, reflecting a lack of visibility across communication journeys.

Legado will be sharing findings from the report at the Building Societies Association Annual Conference, taking place at the EICC in Edinburgh on 28–29 April, where the team will be available at stand 22.

The Building Society Insight Report 2026 is intended to support a wider industry conversation around how the mutual sector can modernise communication while maintaining the trust and accessibility that define the model.

The full report is available here.

Legado, headquartered in Edinburgh, supports financial institutions in delivering secure digital communications, document management and signing workflows. Its clients include FNZ, Quilter, Scottish Building Society, Moneyhub and Co-op Legal Services.

MoneyHive

University of Glasgow and Lloyds Banking Group announce groundbreaking agentic AI research programme

  • The University of Glasgow and Lloyds Banking Group have launched a four‑year research partnership to explore how AI can support software and data engineering.
  • The project will help Lloyds Banking Group implement agentic AI at scale within their software engineering practice, while giving University researchers a unique opportunity to study large‑scale engineering transformation in a real‑world setting.
  • The partnership will create a PhD, a Masters of Research and a post‑doctoral role.
  • The project’s findings will guide how Lloyds Group scales the use of agentic AI across wider data and engineering teams and contribute to the development of best practice, national policy and industry standards.

A new research partnership between the University of Glasgow and Lloyds Banking Group is setting out to explore the potential of AI to support software and data engineering. 

Over the next four years, the partners will explore how large language model-based coding tools called agentic AIs could support and enhance the work of software and data engineers at Lloyds Banking Group. 

Agentic AIs are software tools which act as semi-autonomous ‘agents’ to complete tasks of varying complexity. In software and data engineering, they are already being used to write and debug code, solve technical problems, and perform a variety of project management tasks.

As the UK’s largest digital bank, Lloyds Banking Group is investing significantly in developing new digital software and services, alongside training and new skills for colleagues, to support its 28 million customers.

The University’s research team and Lloyds Banking Group will work together to design experiments that test the efficacy of agentic AI for high priority activities in individual software teams.  The team will use a variety of empirical software engineering research techniques to gather evidence, such as data mining.

The project will help Lloyds Banking Group implement an agentic AI approach to software and data engineering and measure the impact across their organisation. At the same time, it will provide software engineering researchers at the University with a rare opportunity to study and contribute to a large-scale transformation to software and data engineering practice.

The collaboration will create a PhD and a Masters of Research position at the University, along with a post-doctoral research associate post to work with Lloyds’ software engineering teams.

Dr Tim Storer, of the University of Glasgow’s School of Computing Science, will lead the University’s side of the partnership along with colleague Dr Peggy Gregory. 

Dr Storer said: “Agentic-driven software engineering is a fast-developing sector with the potential to enable human engineers to work more efficiently by automating some tasks and allowing them to focus their skills on higher-level work.

“However, there has been relatively little research in industry on how integrating agentic AI into software engineering practices can be done effectively in large-scale organisations. 

“We’re delighted to be partnering with Lloyds Banking Group on this groundbreaking project. Together, we will enable the Group’s plans to increase their software development capacity, produce high-quality research for the benefit of all, and influence national policy and industry standards.”


Lloyds Banking Group’s contribution will be led by Dr Shane Montague, Head of Research Engineering, with executive sponsorship from Professor Andrew McDonald, Enterprise Data Provisioning, Technology Platform Lead.

Dr Shane Montague said: “Lloyds Banking Group’s mission to Help Britain Prosper means leading innovation that genuinely improves how engineering gets done, with a focus on delivering enhanced digital services for our customers.

“We’re excited to partner with the University of Glasgow to gather rigorous, real-world evidence from day-to-day engineering work, so we can understand what really works and how agentic AI can be applied effectively and responsibly at scale.” 

Each quarter, the partnership will task Lloyds Banking Group’s software and data engineers in Bristol, Manchester and Hyderabad to work with their agentic AI counterparts on a different type of task with the aim to measure the impact on quality and speed of delivery. 

As the partnership continues, the Group will develop and improve their understanding of how to harness the benefits of agentic AI. Successful projects will be rolled out across the Group’s wider data teams, and eventually to all software and data engineering teams.

At the same time, Glasgow researchers will work alongside the teams to gather evidence on each project’s impact on efficiency, workflow and the day-to-day work of the teams.

Together, the partners will publish regular research papers documenting their work and develop best-practice documents to help organisations of all scales integrate AI into their software and data product development processes.

Every Life Moment Is a Money Moment

By Dia Banerji, Founder and CEO, Cherpa.ai

Separation. Redundancy. Having a baby. Losing a parent. Caring for an ageing relative. Retiring.
Every one of these moments comes with money questions. And for most people, those questions arrive at exactly the wrong time, when you are stressed, stretched, and trying to hold the rest of life together.
In some ways, I have been trying to make money simpler for people my whole career. I spent over 20 years in financial services, building products, shaping propositions, and working with customers at scale. I saw the best of what our industry can do, and I also saw a pattern that kept repeating.
The people who need help most are often the least likely to get it.
Not because they are not capable. Not because they are not trying. But because the industry still expects people to work out what they need, hunt it down across multiple sources, and then stitch it together for themselves, translating generic education into decisions that make sense for their own lives, often in the very moments they have the least capacity to do so.

The problem is not knowledge, it is design

Financial services impact everyone and it should work for everyone.

Yet the experience most people have is fragmented and exhausting. One app for budgeting. Another for savings. Another for pensions. Another for benefits. Another for insurance. Each tool does something useful in isolation, but real life does not arrive in neat categories.

If you are going through a separation, you might need to rethink your mortgage, update your pension beneficiary, understand what help exists for short term bills, and decide what to tackle first. Those are connected questions, but our tools split them into separate journeys, leaving the person to join the dots. We assume information equals empowerment. Too often it is just cognitive load, and when life is already full, it becomes disengagement rather than better decisions.

The same is true for financial education. The industry has invested heavily in it, and rightly so, but it is usually delivered at a distance from real life, generic, broad, and rarely anchored to the moment someone is actually living through. It tells you what people like you should think about, not what it means for you, right now, in your specific situation.

And if the choice is between a webinar on pension consolidation and the next season of Bridgerton, I know which one I am choosing, and I have worked in pension!

People do not need more content. They need clarity.

The advice gap, and the missing middle

There is another layer to this. Regulated advice is essential for big, complex decisions. But most everyday money questions are not asking for a product recommendation. They are asking for direction, options, and reassurance.

People want to know things like:

  • What support can I access right now
  • What should I change first
  • What am I missing
  • What is the “obvious” thing that everyone else seems to know

Often the most valuable intervention is not a recommendation. It is connecting the dots.

Before we built anything, we surveyed people about money confidence. Nine in ten told us they could improve. Many said they feel anxious just thinking about their finances. A meaningful number said they do not seek help from anyone at all. And the words people used stuck with me:

“I don’t need a PhD in financial products. Just tell me what’s relevant to me.”
“My budgeting app shames me for buying a coffee. Too many apps, too little help.”
“Make me feel safe asking stupid questions.”

That last line matters more than it seems. Because the real barrier is often emotional. Shame, fear of getting it wrong, fear of being judged, fear of being sold to, fear of admitting you do not understand.

What should the future feel like

I believe we are entering a new era of financial support. One where the default experience is not search, not generic content, and not a cold handoff into a process designed for specialists.

The future should feel more like this:

One front door. A conversation. Your life context. The options that matter to you.

Not to replace regulated advice, and not to turn every question into a product journey. Instead, to help people navigate the messy, human moments where money is involved, which is most moments.

To do that well, three things have to change.

First, we have to start from life moments, not financial categories. Life is the organising system. The tools should follow.

Second, we have to make information genuinely usable. That means connecting it, prioritising it, and presenting it in plain language, with next steps that feel doable.

Third, we have to treat trust and privacy as design requirements, not legal footnotes. Many people are understandably reluctant to share bank data with a new app.

Building a new front door to financial support

Cherpa exists to meet people right where they are. When life changes, money questions do not arrive neatly labelled. They arrive tangled, emotional, and urgent, and yet we still ask people to navigate a maze of tools, terminology, and generic content.

So we are taking a different approach. We start where real life starts, with the moment, not the product. One conversation that helps someone orient quickly, join the dots across the areas that matter, and move from noise to a clear set of options and next steps. The ambition is to create a trusted front door, a place people can begin, without needing to hand over more data than they are comfortable sharing.

That shift, from fear to agency, is the outcome I care about.

Why this is personal

I lost my dad when I was fourteen. I watched my mum try to navigate a financial system that gave her no useful answers during the hardest moment of her life. That memory has never left me.

It is one thing to know, intellectually, that help exists. It is another to live the reality of not being able to find it, understand it, or know what applies to you.

That is why I keep coming back to this belief.

Every life moment is a money moment. And nobody should have to face them alone.

Dia Banerji is the Founder and CEO of Cherpa.ai, based in Edinburgh.

Tech giants urged to join fight against soaring scam ads in UK

Social media giants are being urged to join the fight against the soaring number of scam ads in the UK and to pay their fair share in combatting online fraud. The call comes ahead of the Government’s National Fraud Strategy, set to be published imminently.

The Payments Association (TPA), wants a Home Office-led overhaul of how online fraud is fought in the UK and set out the sector’s view on the way forward and how to take action at its PAY360 event in London this month.

Scam ads use AI tools to impersonate trusted brands and exploit social media algorithms to appear at the top of shoppers’ search results.  They offer fake products or services to steal money or personal data.

Recent years have seen a surge in scam ads on sites like X, Facebook and Instagram.  It is estimated that UK shoppers see an average of 185 scam ads a month.

The Payments Association wants a fairer regulatory framework for fighting online fraud.  While social media platforms generate revenue from all advertising, real and fake, it is financial institutions that bear the brunt of combatting the crime. 

Consumers conned by fake adverts lose money individually, and the total impact is adding up.  According to recent data from Juniper Research, UK shoppers lost £44 million to fake ad scams in 2025 – that figure is set to rise to £84 million by 2030.

The fraud is called Authorised Push Payment (APP) fraud because consumers are conned into voluntarily handing over their money.  

Tougher consumer protection regulations have seen a mandatory reimbursement threshold for APP fraud imposed in October 2024 and payment service providers have reimbursed 87% of all scam-related losses since this was implemented.

But social media giants, where fraud originates, pay nothing to reimburse shoppers who become victims of crime on their platforms. 

It is estimated that social media platforms generated £3.8bn in revenue from scam ads in 2025, roughly ten per cent of all social media ad revenue.  Advertising on social media is set to grow by 120 per cent in the next five years to be worth £84bn by 2030.

Last month The Payments Association published its manifesto for 2026, called Making Britain a Payments Powerhouse.

It outlined plans for the Home Office to draw up a new “shared responsibility framework” which would see liability for economic crime “shared proportionately amongst stakeholders based on origination data”. 

The UK is a major target of scam ads.  In 2025 alone it is estimated to account for 95 billion scam ad impressions – this figure is set to rise to 137 billion by 2030.

Riccardo Tordera Ricchi, TPA Vice President – Policy and Government Relations, said: “Payment firms are expected to stop fraud at the point money is transferred when the real crime has been committed upstream – through digital communication and scam advertising. 

“It cannot be right that while social media platforms benefit from the revenue generated by online fraud, consumers and payment firms are left to pick up the bill for that crime.”

The Payments Association wants Ministers to tighten Britain’s National Fraud Strategy (of which a major update is due imminently)  by extending the Economic Crime Levy to both social media and telecoms companies.

The levy is a government charge imposed on more than 4,000 businesses regulated under Anti-Money Laundering laws.

Depending on their size, companies pay a flat annual fee – ranging from £10m to £1bn – to fund initiatives to combat money laundering and economic crime.  From next month (April) thousands of larger firms will face substantial increases in the fee.

At its PAY360 event this month, The Payments Association will publish a paper also calling on social media giants to do more to detect and prevent online fraud. 

It wants big tech and telecoms firms to sign up to the Online Fraud Charter, improve fraud detection protocols and strengthen verification of online advertisers.

The Association is also calling for new legislation to allow for better data sharing across industries and the creation of a new UK Digital Payments Fraud Centre – an independent hub that uses AI to detect fraud trends and co-ordinate responses across payments, telecoms, e-commerce and law enforcement. 

Chancellor Rachel Reeves last year signalled the Government was considering a greater role for tech and telecommunications firms in battling fraud. 

Launching Turnkey PI and unveiling our rebrand: a new chapter in insolvency technology

By Turnkey, the cloud-based insolvency software provider.

After over four decades of supporting insolvency professionals with powerful, reliable technology, we are introducing a new product, Turnkey PI, and stepping into a bold new era with our rebrand. It’s more than a refreshed logo or updated colour palette: it’s a reflection of who we’ve become and where we’re going.

A natural next step: Welcome Turnkey PI

For over four decades, we’ve been focused on doing one thing exceptionally well: supporting corporate insolvency professionals with robust, purpose-built technology. Since then, we’ve grown in experience, capability, and reach – and we’ve realised something: we weren’t just a corporate insolvency software provider anymore; we were becoming a broader technology partner to modern insolvency practices. Globally.

As a matter of fact, one of the biggest drivers behind our rebrand is something we’re incredibly proud of: the launch of Turnkey PI (Personal Insolvency). It’s an important step for us, and it signals something bigger: that Turnkey is growing to support the full landscape of the insolvency industry.

Turnkey PI goes beyond our existing capabilities by delivering connected, client-centric tools built specifically for personal insolvency practitioners. At its heart is a secure, intuitive Client Portal where clients can submit and track queries, upload documents, make secure payments, approve actions electronically, and monitor real-time case progress through a clear dashboard.

“This product matters because it can affect people who are in debt in an unbelievably positive way.” – Craig McDonnell, Director at Turnkey

Alongside this, a fully integrated Communications Hub centralises email, SMS, and WhatsApp in one place, automatically storing all correspondence against the case file. The result is a complete audit trail that strengthens compliance, improves transparency, and reduces administrative workload.

Over the years, our product suite has become more sophisticated, more integrated, and more intuitive. The old brand no longer fully represented the technology behind it. Our new look is modern, confident, and purposeful designed to visually express the clarity and ease our solutions deliver.

“This milestone brings our growth strategy to life – transforming our vision into delivery through a reimagined, modern brand that better reflects who we are today and provides a strong foundation for continued expansion.” – Deborah Baxter, CEO at Turnkey

This new phase is also a reflection of the people behind it. There’s a real sense of pride across the business in what we’ve achieved and where we’re heading, and it’s that collective energy that’s powering this next stage for Turnkey.

Merchant Transact 360: The Event Shaping the Future of Merchant Payments

Co-located with PAY360, Europe’s largest payments event, Merchant Transact 360 is the new, dedicated conference for merchant payment professionals. On the 25-26 March 2026, the event will welcome 400+ attendees, including 200+ leading merchants, for two days of curated insight, innovation and networking.

In an increasingly complex ecosystem, Merchants look 10-15 years ahead, anticipating how future generations will shop, pay and consume, Merchant Transact 360 brings the community together to explore what’s next at a time when seamless money movement and agile payments strategies are becoming central to growth.

A Merchant-Led Agenda

Shaped by The Payments Association’s Merchant Payments Working Group, with input from leaders at Spotify, BT, Frasers Group, Sky, DAZN and Jaguar Land Rover, the agenda reflects the issues merchants are tackling right now.

Across keynotes, panel discussions and closed-door roundtables, 50+ speakers will address the sector’s most urgent themes:

  • Maximising revenue and reducing loss – Increase acceptance, optimise methods, fix failure points and mitigate emerging fraud.
  • Enhancing customer experience – Deliver seamless checkout experiences that match evolving payment preferences.
  • Reducing operational costs – Cut fees, eliminate hidden costs and streamline your payments tech stack.
  • Navigating compliance and regulation – Stay ahead of new open banking, data and security requirements with reduced internal strain.
  • Driving strategic growth – Transform payments into a growth driver through analytics, fraud insights and cross-border expansion.

Purpose-Built for Merchants

  • A two-day conference dedicated solely to merchant payments
  • Peer-to-peer roundtables for confidential, experience-driven discussion
  • AI-powered matchmaking to help attendees connect with the right people
  • A VIP lounge exclusively for merchant teams

The event welcomes attendees from across retail, hospitality, telecom, travel and digital services, including members of our growing merchant community such as BT Group, Coop, Marriott, New Look, Flutter Entertainment and Sky.

Why Attend?

Merchant Transact 360 is the only event built for merchants rather than around them. It provides:

  • Access to merchant-focused insights and practical case studies
  • The opportunity to meet 200+ fellow merchants and industry partners
  • Direct engagement with decision-makers who influence payments strategy
  • A platform to showcase and discover solutions that drive measurable impact

Whether you aim to streamline costs, improve customer experience, reduce fraud, or re-position payments as a strategic growth tool, Merchant Transact 360 offers the essential space to connect, learn and lead.

Get your tickets here.

Use Code FintechScotland20 to save 20% off your delegate pass.

Where Banking Is Heading: From Vision to Execution in London this May

Banking Transformation Summit | 19–20 May | Tobacco Dock, London

The Banking Transformation Summit is the definitive gathering for senior executives driving real change inside Europe’s leading banks and building societies to shape what’s next in banking. Returning to London on 19–20 May, a verified audience of 1,000 decision-makers will convene at Tobacco Dock; a first-class venue delivering premium hospitality for all attendees, and located a convenient distance from London’s financial districts and major transport links for ease of travel.

What to expect: agenda and themes

Carefully curated to ensure high-value connection and strategic clarity, the two-day agenda addresses the decisions, technologies and leadership challenges actively reshaping banking today. Day One focuses on vision and where banking is heading, exploring what’s changing across the industry, the forces shaping the future of financial services, and what leaders need to be thinking about next as regulation, technology, and customer expectations continue to evolve. Day Two turns vision into execution, examining how ideas translate into action inside complex banking environments, what actually works in practice, and how teams move forward with confidence and clarity.

Across the two days, 150 world-class speakers will share practical, battle-tested insights and honest perspectives on what’s working today and what’s coming next, providing actionable, take-home learnings to apply to your own strategies. Through keynotes, panels, roundtables, lightning talks and demos, they’ll divulge exclusive case studies across six core themes, reflecting the most important challenges and opportunities banks are facing:

  • The AI Frontier: Explore how generative AI, machine learning, and predictive analytics are transforming customer engagement, fraud detection, risk management, and operations.
  • Intelligent Infrastructure: Learn how banks are simplifying legacy environments, improving resilience, and building the foundations for AI-powered transformation.
  • Money in Motion: Discover how the flow of money is changing, with real-time payments, instant settlement, digital identity, and the platforms powering embedded finance.
  • Trust in the System: Explore how banks are strengthening defences, improving detection and response, and protecting customers while still enabling innovation.
  • Power to the People: Dive into how banks are redesigning services that are faster, simpler, and more relevant while meeting rising expectations and Consumer Duty.
  • Human & Machine Leadership: Learn how banks adapt their culture, operating models, and ways of working as automation and AI reshape roles, teams, and decision-making.

Networking, audience and how to attend

Every detail has been centred around connection, from the event app with messaging and meeting booking functionality, to networking breaks and more informal drinks receptions – ensuring you network and connect with the transformation leaders driving real change. With 62% of attendees at VP-level and above, and more than 120 banks and building societies in attendance, you’re 5x more likely to meet a bank than at other European Fintech conferences.

This year, to protect the experience, attendance is capped at just 750 complimentary tickets for banks and building societies, and limited sponsorship opportunities are available on a first-come first-served basis.

Visit the links below to learn more.

Banks & Building Societies Apply to Attend for Free: https://hubs.ly/Q03_lXt10

Sponsorship Enquiries: https://hubs.ly/Q03_lYm90