EP 407 - What’s Shaping the Future of Financial Innovation in Asia? - Samantha Ghiotti and Shwetank Verma

Asia’s financial landscape is evolving along uneven but deeply revealing lines. Southeast Asia is shaped by speed, experimentation, and the need for financial inclusion at scale, while Japan is defined by stability, institutional trust, and a deliberate approach to modernization.

In this episode of ATP, Samantha Ghiotti, a co-Founder and CEO of Habitto and Shwetank Verma, a co-Founder and Managing Partner at Leo Capital, discuss how these differences illuminate why digital public infrastructure, identity systems, interoperable payment rails, and secure data-sharing frameworks, will be central to the region’s next phase of fintech growth.

Some of the topics that Samantha and Shwetank discussed in detail included:

• Digital public infrastructure will be the primary catalyst of innovation
• India’s public digital infrastructure is more advanced than much of the rest of the world
• Southeast Asian startups still cannot scale like founders imagined back in 2012
• Data sovereignty is the next big battle and the markets where data portability becomes a norm will see faster innovation
• The next decade of Asian FinTech will be defined by convergence, building infrastructure that prioritizes stability, trust, and long-term consumer protection