AT STELLAR Coffee in Kuala Lumpur’s historic Rex building, founder Cheyenne Si serves Johor-grown Liberica beans. About seven in 10 of her customers are tourists. Before her shop joined Malaysia’s DuitNow QR network in late 2023, customers would fumble at the counter with currencies she couldn’t easily accept, and cash piled up. Today, more than 90 percent of her transactions are cashless, paid through visitors’ home e-wallets. That shift, multiplied across more than 360,000 Malaysian micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) accepting cross-border mobile payments, is the story Ant International wants to tell about itself.
The company’s 2025 Sustainability Report, released May 12, 2026, argues that AI in financial services should reach the smallest businesses in emerging markets. Whether the report delivers depends on which page you’re reading.
Continue reading with one of these options:
Ad-free access
P 80 per month
(billed annually at P 960)
- Unlimited ad-free access to website articles
- Limited offer: Subscribe today and get digital edition access for free (accessible with up to 3 devices)