As mobile payments experience rapid growth in the region, Chinese Internet giant Tencent Holdings is considering launching WeChat Pay, its digital payments platform service, in Thailand, says Royal Chen, vice president of financial technology for Tencent.

“We are considering which approach – doing the payment service by ourselves or working with local partners – is more suitable to launch WeChat Pay Thailand,” Chen told a group interview for Thai media on Wednesday in Hangzhou.

Chen is responsible for the product planning and operation in both the China and international payment services for the company. Tencent is thinking about partnering with certain Thai business sectors, particularly banks, to provide the service because payment needs to be localised in different countries.

“A local partner is important,” Chen stressed several times during the interview.

Thailand is a key market for the company, given the huge number of users of WeChat, Tencent’s popular social network, Chen said.

However, the firm has no timeline to launch WeChat Pay Thailand, he added.

WeChat Pay service is currently provided in Thailand for Chinese tourists, to ensure they have a good experience while away from home.

China remains the largest contributor in terms of both arrivals and tourism revenue to Thailand and, on average, they spend more than other tourists – above Bt5,000 per person a day, according to data from the tourism authority.

Chinese accounted for nearly one-third of last year’s record 35 million arrivals but the number began to fall in August this year, plunging 11.77 per cent from a year earlier due to a boat accident that killed over 40 Chinese in Phuket in early July.

WeChat Pay has about 800 million active monthly users, most of them Chinese nationals, according to Tencent. The payment feature integrated into the WeChat app is now supported by merchants in over 40 countries, including Thailand.

In August this year, WeChat launched payment features in Malaysia called WeChat Pay My, its first market in Asia beyond mainland China and Hong Kong.

The WeChat Malaysia’s payment feature will enable local businesses to engage with their customers under the same platform, and make or transfer payments in Malaysian ringgit.

“The outcome is beyond our expectations, and we are expecting the digital wallet in Malaysia will grow faster than in others and even faster than in Hong Kong,” Chen said.

In 2016, Tencent launched WeChat Pay HK in Hong Kong with transaction growth exceeding ten-fold last year. Although it’s difficult for Chen to forecast the trend of mobile payments for the next three years because the system has been in use for just four years in China, his guess it that developments could speed up and cover more business sectors.

Convenience highlighted

Payment technology developments aim for convenience and ease of use, and for users to feel like they are at home even while travelling, with no need to worry about currency exchange rates, Chen said.

“In the future, mobile payment systems will be part of your daily life. It’s just like you drive a car to your home [today] and have a very good experience or enjoy making a payment from your home. You can order coffee and the shop will send a messenger to facilitate your payment,” Chen said.

Also, payment systems in the future will be cashless. Consumers may not need to scan the QR code when doing transactions, because everything will be on cloud services and big data, he said.

From the consumer’s point of view, they do not need to bother with which method of payment they are using, because all their data is already in the cloud and it’s safe, he said.

“We can use voice recognition or facial recognition in order to identify users when they want to make a payment transaction,” he added.

During his speech titled “Exploration of Cross-border Mobile Payment, its Development and Challenges Ahead” at the Money 20/20 conference held in Hangzhou on Wednesday, Chen said mobile payments are developing rapidly in China with support from the regulatory authorities. The growth will continue and penetrate different segments of society, he said.

Tencent will continue to actively explore reaching out to overseas markets via three channels – Chinese outbound tourists, WeChat Pay and the Open Payment Platform.

He cited the success story of WeChat Red Packet since its 2014 launch. The Red Packet continues to break its own records from time to time. That mobile application was developed by Tencent based on the Chinese tradition of hongbao in which money is given to family and friends as a gift.

WeChat Red Packet transactions in one week during this year’s Chinese New Year were 768 million yuan (Bt3.64 billion), Chen said.

In October, Tencent launched the first of its kind cross-border mobile payment service, allowing WeChat Pay HK users to conduct yuan-denominated transactions with Hong Kong dollars in mainland China.

Chen noted the WeChat mini-programmes, tax refunds dubbed the “We Tax Refund”, that enable Chinese tourists to quickly apply for tax refunds from within the app while abroad or once they have returned home.

The service is now open in 81 airports and 19 countries, but not yet in Thailand, though Chen said his firm has a plan to bring it here.

“We are willing to cooperate with partners to facilitate the development of mobile payments globally,” he said.

“ML helps to forecast when the machine will be non-functional. If customers know in advance they will be able to handle the problem or avoid it and that will lead to efficient production and reduced damage,” said Ron Beck, energy industry marketing director of AspenTech, in Bangkok this past week.

Beck gave an example of AspenTech’s “predictive and prescriptive” maintenance solution, which has been developed as tools to alert customers that something is going to happen and why it will happen.

He explained that predictive analytics is able to tell businesses that a machine was going to break down in 30 days because that is what the data showed, he said.

Prescriptive analytics will also provide the data that shows something is leaking, for example, so that the operators can reduce the temperature and prevent it from happening, he added.

At AspenTech, they create “low-touch machine learning” in which they build a complete application that is very easy to use and can be easily taught to a company so that they can do it themselves, Beck said.

The advanced machine learning software, packaged as prescriptive maintenance solutions, has demonstrated incredible success in the early identification of equipment failures, and in learning behavioural patterns from streams of digital data produced by sensors on the relevant equipment, according to Beck.

A couple of Thai companies are now implementing the prescriptive maintenance.

By adopting that solution, they can avoid unplanned breakdowns of equipment while increasing productivity and reducing the cost of maintenance, said the director, whose company has been in Thailand for over 20 years.

In the energy sector, digital transformation is a key to making the most effective use of resources as firms or governments utilise digital technology to figure out the best solution, he said.

Digital transformation will also make things easier for people to use, he added.

Like other sectors, energy companies are increasingly embracing digital transformation. But companies need a clear road map to be successful, one that aligns with business objectives and is pegged to measurable outcomes, he said.

Companies need to maximise value from current technology and understand the level of maturity in their organisations, he added.

It is also necessary to define business drivers, challenges and key success metrics. Workforce skills development should be encouraged as well, Beck said.

Transformation the key

Finally, it is the smart companies with the ability to successfully transform digitally and pursue operational excellence via asset optimisation that will be market leaders, he concluded.

For Thailand, Beck said, digitalisation is a key integration driver for the process industry. It can drive leadership in the new generation of integrated plants, empower teams across remote locations, and boost cooperation between industry players in the region, Beck explained.

In his view, Thailand and Malaysia are ahead of other neighbouring countries in terms of the speed of take-up of digital transformation.

According to Beck, AspenTech started getting requests to help Thai companies with digital strategies about a year-and-a-half ago – about the same time they started doing the same with Malaysia.

“I think companies in Thailand generally are open to it. They assigned a group of people to work on it and are spending a lot of money and that’s the commitment,” Beck said.

“For us, Thailand 4.0 is about digital transformation.

“Thailand is trying to push that concept so the energy companies are trying to respond by asking how they can pursue digital transformation in a practical way.”

However, as Thailand embraces the 4.0 era, energy companies need to look at a more integrated energy approach, including ensuring multiple energy sources in their master plans, Beck suggests.

“If someone could think about it that way, which might not be limited to one individual company, to me that would be a really great way to think about progressing through Thailand 4.0,” he said.

The other component involves identifying the kind of product you want coming out at the end of the process, he said.

“The concept of Thailand 4.0 is to transform society to making higher value products, so more people can be self-employed and people can make more money.”

The summit celebrated diverse creators across the region who are using the power of one view to open minds, inspire understanding, celebrate culture – and make a difference.

Following a series of kick-off boot camps across Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand, a committee selected 15 regional “fellows” from these five countries, collectively representing an audience of over two million fans. Over the past two months, armed with production funding and opportunities to work with civil society organisations, these up-and-coming voices created more than 15 inspiring videos.

Additionally, YouTube’s Creators for Change ambassadors recently came together to release over 50 new films that aim to promote tolerance, encourage empathy, and spark dialogue, locally and globally.

At the summit, the video projects of ambassadors and fellows across APAC were officially premiered to an audience of policymakers, NGOs, and fellow creators who are passionate about driving positive change. Creators also had the opportunity to reflect on their learning journeys and cement established partnerships to combat misinformation, extremism and intolerance through a variety of approaches.

Simon Finley, regional conflict prevention adviser, said it was very encouraging to experience a group of such dynamic and creative young people collaborating with others – such as the UNDP, private sector companies like Google, and local NGOs – to produce positive messages advocating for peace. “Building networks and partnerships like the ones here is important to make sure that tomorrow’s world is a safer and more tolerant one,” said Finley.

Jake Lucchi, Google Asia Pacific’s head of content and AI for public policy, said that the tech giant is pleased to partner with UNDP on this important initiative. They are happy to see the power of online platforms like YouTube leveraged to promote positive social values and build a sense of community among people from diverse backgrounds, said Lucchi.

In line with the government’s Thailand 4.0 initiative, the private university aims to familiarise its first-year college students with the latest cloud-based computing facilities provided by Oracle for its new course – Innovative Start-ups.

For the first time, first-year students will have access to a cutting-edge digital cloud platform to turn their innovative ideas into real online businesses, while studying for their Bachelor’s degrees at the university’s College of Information Technology and Communication.

Dr Chetneti Srisa-an, the dean, said Oracle Cloud is chosen to power the students’ start-up community, which kicked off last year.

So far, recent graduates of Rangsit University have already launched eight start-ups, including those related to QueQ app (which does away with unnecessarily having to queue up at restaurants, hospitals etc) and GateDee app (for an at-home blood-testing service).

Last year, Rangsit University’s graduates also contested in the Start-up Thailand league organised by National Innovation Agency that provides incubation, funding and other services to promising start-ups. According to Chetneti, the university’s innovative start-up course is open to all first-year students. They can earn a total of six credits through project-based assignments, while also competing to win prize money in multiple contests.

The university has also encouraged students to take part in the Asian business plan competition, which covers start-ups from nine countries including Thailand.

For this year, more than 160 students have enrolled in the course with a total of 28 projects underway, and so they need the latest cloud-based computing facilities to turn good ideas into scalable online enterprises that solve problems for people and businesses.

“We want to promote to students that they commercialise their innovative ideas for various use cases,” he said, noting that Thailand had previously wasted a lot of financial and other resources on many research projects that could not be further developed and commercialised.

According to Chetneti, ongoing digitalisation of the economy and society is posing new challenges to educators as they need to prepare students for the “workforce 4.0”, including through a more personalised education platform with a focus on technology and innovation.

However, not all students will become entrepreneurs, since the ratio of success is less than 20 per cent. Many graduates will still seek jobs as salaried workers but they, too will need new skills and a certain mindset for innovative projects in their workplace.

The GateDee app’s co-founder Kannaphat Kraengkrai is a recent graduate of RSU. Kannaphat said GateDee was created by her and three classmates to help elderly persons who need to get their blood tested regularly.

At most hospitals, people have to wait at least an hour for blood-test results before they can see the doctor, so it is more convenient to have a licensed practitioner get a blood sample for lab analysis ahead of a visit to the doctor’s office.

Kannaphat says Thailand now has about 12 million seniors aged 60 or above. There is a huge potential market for such a service in the rapidly ageing society.

Customers can now get an appointment online for the service and pay for it using the MyMo payment app from Government Savings Bank, Kannaphat said, adding that lab results are delivered online within 24 hours.

Passanan Chamusri, cloud platform lead at Oracle Corp (Thailand), said the company helps the university educate students for workforce 4.0 by leveraging its global learning experience as well as various cases in which innovative technology is practised in the cloud-based environment. The Oracle Cloud programme also highlights competition to help make education more effective.

The workforce 4.0 course starts with sessions to inspire first-year students with actual start-up case studies.

Students then take classes on fundamental knowledge about digital transformation and an introduction to creating platforms in order to develop their own ideas and bring them to life.

Next, students learn how AI (artificial intelligence) and other tools can be used to help execute the projects by embedding it into the core technology to drive innovation and potential success.

The programme also includes hackathon-themed contests in which students create products from their initial ideas. In this process, promising ideas are made concrete by developing them into healthcare apps, micro loan apps, a better registration system or grading system, or a student behaviour analysis system.