He sold UnionPay to Fifth Avenue jewellers with a crystal logo. Now Jia Hang is betting stablecoins will make payment equal settlement.
Jia Hang is Executive Chairman of DCS Group, the Singapore company that started life as Diners Club Singapore in 1973. He has spent more than two decades in payments, starting at the People’s Bank of China in Shenzhen, where he wrote the rules for auditing banks’ computer systems. He went on to build UnionPay’s business across the Americas and helped shape Ant Group’s international strategy, including its partner wallets in Southeast Asia.
In this episode of Fintech Fireside Asia, he walks through how payments moved from cards to mobile wallets to stablecoins, and what he saw at each turn.
In this episode:
- Why UnionPay sent him to New York, and how his daughter gave him the nickname Panda
- How a failed Chinatown rollout led UnionPay to duty free stores and crystal logos in luxury shop windows
- Why he first thought QR payments were unsafe, then left UnionPay for Ant
- The “GLocal” and “GNet” strategy behind Alipay+ and how Ant chose partners like Touch ‘n Go
- Why he believes stablecoins merge the data flow and the money flow, and where DCS fits as a Web 2.5 bridge
- His case against restricting yield on stablecoins
