Trust, data, and embedded journeys – why payments are no longer the end of travel but the start of a relationship.
This story is based on a panel at WiT Singapore, “Who Owns The Wallet? Fintech and Travel in The Next 20”. The panellists included Angeline Hon, Vice President, Digital & Data, Mandai Wildlife Group; Pan Yan, Head of Strategic Partnership Office, Ant International; Tania Platt, Global Head of B2B Travel, Visa and Aireen Omar, CEO, BigPay with Timothy Hughes, Vice President Corporate Development, Agoda.
Travel didn’t “catch” the fintech wave, it helped create it. That was the provocation from Ant’s Pan Yan who argued that travel, by nature, is where payments get hardest (cross-border, multi-currency, refunds, settlement) and therefore where innovation tends to begin.
“Loyalty as currency, co-brands, cross-border rails – many took root in travel and then spread elsewhere,” he said. For the next 20 years, he predicted an even tighter braid: agentic and embedded payments stitched across the entire trip – pre-trip booking, in-destination spend, post-trip services like tax refunds – so the money flow mirrors the traveler journey.
Visa’s Tania Platt added the counterweight: none of this scales without trust. If a traveller is expected to hand their entire trip and wallet to a connected network, the network must be safe and legible. That means fewer confusing checkout pages, clearer rights across payment types (“what protection do I get if I click this button?”), and much better removal of bad actors.
Aireen Omar (Right), CEO, BigPay
Convenience without clarity, she warned, fails the user.
Aireen Omar brought the challenger view from BigPay. Born to remove friction for AirAsia guests, BigPay’s focus has widened from cheap FX and fee-free cross-border spend to remittances and flexible lending (“part-pay” for purchases), with loyalty as the glue. Points matter when they have velocity – earned frequently across partners and redeemed broadly across the ecosystem (flights, restaurants, even petrol).
Done right, she said, payments stop being a cost centre and start becoming a revenue engine and a personalization surface.
On the operator side, Angeline Hon showed what this looks like on the ground at Mandai Wildlife Group. Cashless is now universal across tickets, F&B and retail, turning transactions into first-party data they pipe into a CDP to predict next spend and tailor offers.
AI is already practical: fraud detection is up; reconciliation time is down. Yet one stubborn challenge remains: cross-border conversion. Campaign traffic spikes from certain markets don’t always convert on Mandai’s own checkout but do convert via OTAs/travel agents. The lesson: payment localization can be as decisive as product/price.
Three battlegrounds for the Next 20
1) Consumer Fintech: From “pay” to “predict”
- Embedded everything. Payments, BNPL, price-freeze, insure-tech are moving inside the flow, not bolted on after checkout.
- Kill the plastic? We’re not there yet. Preferences still vary by market; “choice architecture” matters more than absolutism.
- Edge cases matter. Tim Hughes’ Singapore anecdote – a credit card auto-freeze after two back-to-back rides – shows trust breaks at the worst moment. Redundancy (alternative rails, home-wallet acceptance) is part of UX, not an afterthought.
QUOTE: “For essential use cases like ride-hailing, multiple rails and home-wallets are not ‘nice to have’. They’re resilience.” — Pan Yan
Pan Yan, Head of Strategic Partnership Office, Ant International
2) Points as Currency: loyalty that actually moves
- Velocity & breadth. BigPay sees 60% of points now earned outside the core flight ecosystem, but ~80% redeemed inside. That loop only works if partners are broad and redemptions meaningful (not just flights).
- Points ≈ tender? Expect more “points+pay” at checkout and, eventually, points presented as a payment option alongside cards/wallets.
- Experience still rules. For Mandai, a classic points program isn’t the priority yet—but enabling redemptions into tickets/merch is on the roadmap. Loyalty that maps to memories (not just math) will endure.
QUOTE: “Points are valuable when they move often and across partners. Velocity creates loyalty.” – Aireen Omar
3) Cross-Border & Supplier Payments: AI behind the scenes
- Conversion localization. If direct channels stall at payment while OTAs convert, the issue is rarely demand; it’s the last mile of local methods, risk rules and soft-decline handling.
- AI for finance ops. Mandai’s fraud detection and reconciliation gains are here now. Ant is modeling partner cash-flows and FX exposure so suppliers hedge proactively, not reactively.
- B2B outcomes. The invisible wins (lower fraud, auto-recon, accurate cash projection) free teams to fix traveler-visible moments.
Tania Platt, Global Head of B2B Travel, Visa
Trust is the product
Visa’s throughline was simple: reduce choice overload; make protections explicit; clean up the rails. The industry has spent a decade adding buttons to the payment page. The next decade will be about removing the wrong ones.
Mandai reframed payments altogether: not the end of a transaction, but the start of a relationship. Every tap is a data point; every data point is a chance to be relevant (or creepy). Operator trust will increasingly be won by how respectfully and transparently we turn spend into service.
QUOTE: “Stop treating us as processors. Treat us as growth partners.” — Pan Yan
Angeline Hon, Vice President, Digital & Data, Mandai Wildlife Group
Monday-morning playbook
The panellists were asked for their one bit of advice to the audience to do first thing Monday morning.
- Audit the rails you really offer by source market.
Look at top inbound markets and map: acceptance, soft-declines, 3DS behavior, chargeback rules, and alt-methods presented above the fold. If OTAs are converting and you aren’t, start here. - Design for failure paths.
Build graceful fallbacks (home-wallets, alternative rails, offline QR, deferred capture) for the “two rides then freeze” moment. Reliability is UX. - Operationalize AI where it’s boring.
Fraud scoring, reconciliation, cash-flow/FX modeling pay back fast and free budget for traveler-visible innovation. - Make loyalty liquid.
Increase earn partners outside your core; increase burn options inside experiences. Aim for points+pay at every major checkout, with clear value. - Simplify the checkout.
Fewer options, clearer protections. Explain rights per payment type in human words. - Treat payment data like first-party gold.
Pipe it to a CDP with consent; use it for prediction and service, not just retargeting.
