Introduction: From Legacy to API-First in APAC Banking

Asia Pacific is no longer talking about “future payments”—it is living them. The region processed 185.8 billion real-time transactions in 2023, nearly 70 % of the world’s RTP volume and already 24 % of all electronic payments made within APAC. India’s UPI alone cleared 13,116 crore (around 131 billion) payments in FY 2024, dwarfing every other system on the planet. Behind the headline numbers is a structural shift: banks are retiring siloed cores and rebuilding around four mutually reinforcing pillars—open APIs, partner ecosystems, advances in open banking, and cloud native payment platforms. Together these pillars let institutions plug into domestic instant payment rails, embed services inside super apps, and expand liquidity oversight from intraday to real time.

Open APIs: Turning Capabilities into Plug‑and‑Play Products

APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) are the connective tissue of modern finance. By standardizing how software components interact, APIs allow financial institutions to rapidly integrate new services and securely share data with customers and partners. Leveraging APIs, financial institutions can, for example, support their corporate clients by enabling faster onboarding, real-time access to financial data, automated cash management, seamless FX transactions and better integration with clients’ internal systems. In practice, an API first approach supercharges innovation and agility. It provides reusable building blocks so new features can be developed and launched faster. It also enables seamless platform integration—both internally across a bank’s systems and externally with third party applications—ensuring a consistent, real time customer experience.

Singapore’s MAS fosters this API economy with partners like the World Bank’s IFC and ASEAN Bankers Association, through initiatives like API Exchange (APIX). Bank of Indonesia has also been progressing this initiative as part of its Payment System Blueprint (BSPI) 2025 through the launch of the SNAP standard, enabling banks in Indonesia to implement open API-based payment services. At the global level, the G20 and BIS continue to prioritize API harmonization, recognizing that expanded API usage—alongside ISO 20022 data—can unlock greater cross-border interoperability.

Executive Insight: Treat APIs as products with owners, SLAs, and monetization models. Banks that publish high value endpoints—proxy ID look ups, real time cash position APIs—will shape the data grammar of the region, much as UPI’s pay/collect APIs have done for India.

The Rise of Partner Ecosystems

In the API economy, no bank is an island. Leading APAC institutions operate within broader partner ecosystems—interconnected networks of banks, fintechs, payment operators, and non bank platforms.

• Super‑apps such as Grab and Go To embed finance; around 60 % of SEA users now access financial services inside these apps.
• UPI demonstrates platform scale: multiple front‑end apps run on open APIs and serve hundreds of millions of users.
• Various bilateral IPS linkages across ASEAN (e.g. Singapore’s FAST and Thailand’s PromptPay) and in some cases extending to India’s UPI prove cross-border instant payments are feasible but bilateral links lack scalability and reach which is why Project Nexus aims to multi-laterally link IPS networks for 1.7 billion people by 2027.

Executive Insight: Ecosystem leadership is a participation game. Secure, well documented standardized APIs and rapid partner onboarding workflows decide whether your bank is the plumbing—or the platform—inside super apps, merchant wallets, and regional gateway hubs.

Platform Thinking in Practice: Cloud-First and Global Reach

APIs and ecosystems rest on cloud-ready engines. APAC banks are leading cloud adoption, with two-thirds planning to migrate key workloads to public or hybrid clouds, enabling 40–50% faster release cycles.

Cloud native Payment Hubs consolidate RTGS, ACH, card, and instant rails into a single ISO 20022 backbone, giving treasuries a real-time liquidity view. For example, Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has implemented ISO 20022 for its real-time payment system and is actively promoting cloud adoption across financial institutions. The country’s PayNow infrastructure, which supports instant payments, is built on scalable, cloud-ready architecture, enabling seamless integration with banks and fintechs.

Executive Insight: Unified, cloud scale payment hubs future proof banks for CBDC wallets, real time FX, and embedded treasury dashboards—without a forklift upgrade every five years.

Conclusion: Key Takeaways for C-level Strategists

1. APIs are strategic assets. Standardize, secure, and monetize APIs to accelerate integration, shape regional data norms, and unlock new business models.
2. Ecosystems expand influence and multiply reach. Open, well‑governed APIs position banks at heart of super‑apps, digital wallets, and cross‑border corridors while deepening value for corporate clients.
3. Platforms drive agility. Cloud‑native payment hubs offer 24/7 scalability, real‑time liquidity visibility, and modular paths to innovation and revenue.

Bottom Line: Asia Pacific’s payments landscape rewards those who turn APIs, Gen AI, ecosystems, and platforms into a flywheel of continuous innovation. Banks that act now will own the data, relationships, and liquidity flows that define the next decade.

Why Montran Is the Partner of Record

The race is no longer about who can stand up an instant payment rail first; it’s about who can turn APIs, ecosystems and platforms into a self reinforcing flywheel. Institutions that move now—standardizing their APIs, cultivating partner marketplaces, and modernizing to cloud native hubs—will own the data, relationships and liquidity flows that define Asia Pacific finance for the next decade. Those that wait will simply move the money.

Montran has spent over four decades engineering payments infrastructure—from RTGS in 70+ countries to the world’s busiest instant payment hubs. Its Asia Pacific deployments already process 100M+ transactions a peak day, run active-active across clouds, and expose ISO 20022 native APIs out of the box. Banks leverage Montran’s Instant Payments System (IPS) and Global Payments Hub (GPH) not only to comply with domestic schemes but to futureproof for Nexus style cross-border instant payment networks.

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