BANGKOK, THAILAND – Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation (RCBC) Executive Vice President and Chief Innovations and Inclusion Officer Lito Villanueva underscored the critical role of cross-industry collaboration and progressive regulation in accelerating the next phase of digital banking across Asia during the Money20/20 Asia in Bangkok, Thailand.
Speaking before a global audience of financial leaders, regulators, and fintech innovators, Villanueva emphasized that the region is now moving beyond building digital infrastructure toward translating these capabilities into real economic and social impact.
The Founding Chairman of FinTech Alliance PH also highlighted that as Asia’s digital payments ecosystem continues to scale, the next frontier lies in aligning innovation with regulatory agility, ensuring that financial systems remain both resilient and inclusive.
“In promoting a true regime of co-creation, regulatory sandboxes must be pushed further to help scale innovations for inclusion. One idea I strongly support is publishing a living version of sandbox graduation criteria, a real-time, accessible framework that companies can use to assess their own readiness,” Villanueva said.
“The industry does not need more guidance documents. It needs a mirror it can check itself against before walking into a licensing review,” Villanueva added.
Villanueva further emphasized that the future of financial regulation in Asia is no longer defined by oversight alone, but by active partnership, where regulators and industry players co-create solutions anchored on trust, transparency, and shared accountability.
The fintech visionary, who has been the architect of impactful collaborative frameworks and cross-industry collaborations under Fintech Alliance PH, also underpinned the importance of collaborations between the private and public sectors to meet similar aims and goals in advancing digital finance.
He reiterated that as financial services become increasingly digital, stakeholders must ensure that innovation remains inclusive, creating access for underserved sectors rather than widening existing gaps.
The RCBC executive shared his insights in regulatory mechanisms and their impact on the future of digital finance in the panel discussion “The Regulatory Collaboration: Defining Mutual Expectations Between Industry and Authorities,” moderated by Ian Fong. He joined Melchor Plabasan, Senior Director, Technology Risk and Innovation Supervision Department of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas and Jo Yeo, Head of Payments Development & Data Connectivity of the Monetary Authority of Singapore.
Villanueva also spoke in another Money 20/20 panel entitled “Asia's 2026 Payment Passport and the Market Entry Cheat Sheet for Unified Rails” alongside Tawishi Singh, Vice President of the Singapore FinTech Association; Jaclyn Tsai, Chairwoman of the Asia FinTech Alliance; and Kirana S., Executive Director of Asosiasi Blockchain Indonesia. The panel was moderated by Nicole Nguyen, Founder of APAC DAO.
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