Southeast Asia has become one of the most closely watched fintech markets in the world. A young, mobile-first population, a large share of it still outside the traditional banking system, has moved straight to digital wallets, QR payments and app-based lending, while regulators have issued digital banking licences and built cross-border real-time payment links across the region.
That combination has drawn in super-apps, digital banks and lenders. The foundations underneath, from digital identity to core banking systems, are still catching up with the ambition.
In this Q&A, Abdul Mikael, head of sales and partnerships at AND Solutions, discusses what is driving the region’s momentum, how fintech is reaching people and small businesses that banks have historically missed, the role of AI in credit scoring, and what other markets can learn from building in a high-friction environment.
To start, could you introduce yourself and your role, and give a brief picture of what AND Solutions does across Southeast Asia?
I am Abdul Mikael, Head of Sales and Partnerships at AND Solutions. We provide a range of fifinancial technology solutions to the banking, financial services and insurance sector across Southeast Asia, and I handle sales and partnership engagements worldwide. We are now present in 11 countries, providing a complete AI-powered lending technology stack. That includes custom AI credit scoring, intelligent document processing, which we call Mindox, income verification, loan origination systems and loan management systems. The end-to-end capability lets enterprises launch embedded lending much faster, with stronger risk controls and greater flexibility across different markets.
Southeast Asia is often described as the world’s most exciting fintech region right now. From where you sit, what is actually driving that momentum?
We have a young, tech-savvy population, and more than 70 per cent of adults remain unbanked or underbanked. Mobile-first adoption has let the region skip traditional branch banking and move straight to digital wallets and micro-loans. That consumer pull is amplified by progressive regulators issuing digital banking licences and building interoperable cross-border payment networks, such as real-time QR payments across ASEAN, and by super-apps embedding financial services directly into everyday e-commerce and ride-hailing. What makes the region so magnetic is not just rapid app adoption. It is that fintech is solving real, structural friction at a scale few other markets can match.
Financial inclusion is a recurring theme in the region. How is fintech reaching people and small businesses that traditional banking has historically missed?
Fintech is bridging the inclusion gap by replacing traditional banking infrastructure with alternative data, low-friction distribution and small, simple products. Banks historically excluded unbanked individuals and micro-enterprises because of the cost of physical branches and a strict reliance on formal credit histories and collateral. Fintechs use non- traditional data points, such as e-commerce sales, ride-hailing earnings and telco usage, to assess credit risk for people without formal bank statements. Interoperable merchant QR
codes, such as Indonesia’s QRIS or Thailand’s PromptPay, and smartphone-based e-KYC then allow small shops and gig workers to build a digital transaction trail for very little cost.
How would you characterise the role regulators across the region are playing?
Where are they enabling innovation, and where does friction remain?
Regulators are laying down progressive rules, but fintechs still face real bottlenecks in the underlying technology, identity and physical layers. First, there is a digital identity gap. Outside markets such as Singapore, with Singpass, much of the region lacks a unified, government-backed digital ID framework, which makes e-KYC expensive and leaves platforms exposed to AI-driven fraud. Second, there is legacy technology debt and API fragmentation. Even where central banks have launched modern payment rails, traditional partner banks still run on legacy core systems that struggle with real-time API calls and high
micro-transaction volumes. Finally, data localisation and hardware constraints force start-ups to build separate, localised cloud infrastructure in each country rather than running a single regional stack, while physical connectivity remains patchy in rural areas. The policy support is strong, but the identity, core banking and cloud foundations are still catching up.
What role are AI and data playing in the region’s fintech growth, for example in areas like credit scoring for people with thin or no credit history?
In Southeast Asia, AI and data are not just optimisation tools. They are the underwriting engine of the unbanked economy. Without traditional credit-bureau histories for most of the population, AI lets fintechs turn everyday behaviour into a reliable credit profile. Take a small street vendor in Jakarta who has never set foot in a bank. She has no pay slips or tax returns, but she processes 40 QR payments a day on her phone. AI takes that digital footprint, her transaction speed, the consistency of her utility bill payments and her supplier
order cycles, and turns it into a credit profile. It takes what used to be invisible, unbankable daily activity and turns it into an instant 100 dollar working capital loan delivered straight to her phone.
What are the biggest challenges the region still needs to overcome for this growth to be sustainable?
It comes down to a shift in mindset on both sides. From regulators, we need ongoing stewardship rather than just the initial setup. They have laid impressive foundations with digital licences and national payment rails, and the priority now is continuous, supportive backing so that infrastructure can mature and scale safely. From business leaders, the focus has to shift from hyper-growth to operational depth. The era of chasing user numbers or launching endless features for hype is over. Leaders need to strengthen their core
foundations, improve risk controls and unit economics, and build higher-quality financial products that people genuinely rely on.
Looking two to three years ahead, what should the rest of the world expect from Southeast Asian fintech, and what could other markets learn from it?
If there is one lesson the rest of the world can take from Southeast Asian fintech, it is how to build for high utility in high-friction environments. In many Western markets, fintechs build sophisticated technology and then look for a problem to solve. In Southeast Asia it is the opposite. The success stories come from founders who looked at a fragmented, regulation-heavy landscape, identified a real human problem, such as a street vendor needing 50 dollars of working capital or a worker sending money home, and worked backwards to solve it.
Operating across different political systems, changing rules and patchy infrastructure forces companies to build operational discipline and genuine unit economics early. You cannot rely on cheap capital to mask a weak business model. Southeast Asia shows that messy environments do not stop innovation, they refine it.
About Abdul Mikael
Abdul Mikael is Head of Sales and Partnerships at AND Solutions, where he leads the expansion of AI-powered financial technologies across Southeast Asia and other emerging
markets. A former software developer, he holds an MSc in Big Data Management and Analysis and a BSc in Computer Science.
The post Inside Southeast Asia’s Fintech Surge: Inclusion, AI and the Infrastructure Still Catching Up appeared first on The Fintech Times.
