MONEY20/20 Asia Recap

In April 2026, Money20/20 Asia made its return to Bangkok. This event saw the largest assembly of financial professionals, regulators, tech experts, decision makers and investors from banks, fintechs and payment providers in what many in the industry consider Asia’s most prolific and important fintech gatherings. 

Our Thailand representatives were proud to open their city to peers, partners and clients in order to facilitate and engage in meaningful discussions regarding the future of Southeast Asia’s digital financial ecosystem. 

As Level Five maintains an established foothold in the region’s banking industry, with our Thai team working closely with the country’s leading banks, Money20/20 serves as an opportunity to strengthen Thailand’s position as a regional hub in payments innovation, digital banking, fraud prevention and financial technology.

One key highlight for our team was being able to touch base with the CEOs of KBank and Boost after their respective sessions, alongside fruitful discussions with other industry experts.

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Timeline of Events

Monday's fraud consortium brought together leading banks to exchange views on fraud prevention, intelligence sharing and regional collaboration. A clear theme emerged: fraud and scam threats are growing more coordinated, and the industry response must match that sophistication.

Tuesday's Australia Chamber of Commerce and Austrade event drew financial institutions, technology firms and ecosystem partners to discuss Australian innovation, regional expansion and technology partnerships across Southeast Asia.

On Wednesday and Thursday, our team was given the opportunity to touch base with the CEOs of KBank and Boost, allowing us to discuss further strategic developments in the region.

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Key Topics 

Across the week, several noteworthy themes stood out:

AI is Redefining the Ecosystem

Agentic AI is flipping the industry on its head, serving to both accelerate the good and the bad. From digital journeys, customer interactions to fraud risk, the entire financial industry is being pushed to reevaluate its ability to distinguish trusted activity from hostile or manipulated behaviour.

With many organizations already experiencing novel AI-driven attacks, and deepfakes becoming so sophisticated to the point where personalized scams are instantaneously engineered, financial experts must be well-armed to remediate against a highly adaptable offensive.

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Rapid Digitization Across the Board

The drive for financial inclusivity causes embedded finance to become more pervasive than ever. This increasing digitization exposes payment gateways to new attack vectors and expands attack surfaces which organizations must be privy to.

As a result, digital identity, behavior, and device intelligence must no longer be an afterthought, but a new operational status quo in current fraud prevention strategies in order to address technological creep.

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Protecting the Entire Customer Journey

Fraud is taking place many steps earlier in the customer journey, forcing the industry to deploy systems and solutions that are able to catch mules and scammers at the earliest point in the transaction process.

Many of the hurdles involve disassociated communications across AML, compliance, fraud prevention and cybersecurity teams. Catching fraudsters is now a preemptive imperative, requiring the breaking down of siloes and allowing integrated data flows across departments, and the use of predictive, risk-based scoring.

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Acclimatising Towards a Global Digital Payment Infrastructure

As cross-border payment systems evolve, regulators are faced with new challenges, necessitating constant and ever-ready collaboration and communication across banks and fintechs. 

New policies, regulations and compliance practices must be implemented to prevent the abuse and mismanagement of AI across digital payment systems, as these digital systems become more interconnected with each other across regions. 

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Wrapping Up

For Level Five, this week reinforced many of the themes we experienced while engaging with our clients and peers in banking circles and financial institutions across the region. 

Among these themes, there was an obvious call for: 

• Better scam and mule detection systems and measures
• More cohesive coordination and responses across digital journeys
• Standardized use of identity, behavioural and device intelligence
• Practical partnerships that empowers institutions to innovate safely

For the Level Five team — Frederick Chung, David Haynes, Arthitiya Ritthisit, and Fern Thavornnart— it was a fantastic week in Bangkok to be able to connect with clients, partners and friends from across the region. 

We look forward to continuing these conversations in Thailand and across Asia in the weeks ahead.

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