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      Kennie Ong

      Kennie Ong

      Head of Solutions, APAC

      Ubyx

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      Kennie Ong is Head of APAC Solutions at Ubyx, the clearing network for tokenized money. He works with banks, payment companies and fintechs across Asia Pacific so that tokenized money can be accepted and settled as easily as the money already in their systems.

      Kennie has spent more than a decade building payment rails that Asia uses every day. At JPMorgan, he launched FAST and PayNow real-time payments for the Singapore branch. At Citi, he launched instant cross-border payments that now move more than USD 100 million a day across Asia Pacific in 2020.

      As Head of Payment Innovation and Expansion at Amazon, he led the company's digital asset work in e-commerce, looking at how tokenized money and digital currencies could power online checkout and payouts. This included pilots with central banks through Project Rosalind with the BIS Innovation Hub and Project Orchid with the Monetary Authority of Singapore.

      Speaking At

      • 9:30–10:30amTue 17 NovWorkshopWorkshop Room 1Open

        Others

        Trust Applied: From Friction to Flow Across Borders - Powered by Amazon

        WorkshopWorkshop Room 1Open

        About this session

        What would it take to make cross-border payments an enabler of SME growth?

        Six years into the G20 Cross-Border Payments Roadmap, high costs, slow settlement, and complex compliance requirements continue to hold small businesses back. Meanwhile, agentic AI, stablecoins and real-time payment networks are opening new possibilities for paying across borders. In the face of tariffs and fragmentation of trade, improving payments offers governments a practical way to support trade through domestic action.

        Drawing on From Friction to Flow 2.0, a new Nextrade Group study of 1,100 SME importers across Brazil, Indonesia, South Africa and Thailand and dozens of policies shaping crossborder payments around the world economies, this workshop will explore where reform can make the greatest difference. The report’s Cross-Border Payments Enablement Index benchmarks 34 economies across six policy pillars, providing a roadmap for reforms that enable businesses to trade more effectively.

        Participants will work with the findings to identify priority barriers and develop actionable, country-specific reform roadmaps. The focus: turning evidence into practical steps to reduce friction, improve payment flows and unlock opportunities for SMEs.