Hang Jia wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about QR payments when he first encountered them. In fact, he thought they were rather easy to tamper with.

A fraudster could replace a merchant’s QR code overnight, leaving unsuspecting customers sending their money straight into someone else’s wallet.

But QR payments these days have since become safer, with providers introducing measures such as dynamic QR codes that can generate a fresh code for each transaction, reducing the risk of static-code tampering.

Having spent years helping UnionPay expand across the Americas, Hang knew how important security was when handling people’s money.

His experience had also exposed him to the limitations of conventional card payments.

Smaller merchants in developing markets often struggled to afford payment terminals, and some didn’t even have the electricity needed to operate them.

QR payments offered an affordable way around those barriers, eventually convincing Hang that the technology was worth pursuing.

He joined Ant Group in 2015 and helped shape its international strategy, including the early thinking behind a network of local e-wallets that eventually became Alipay+.

Today, as Executive Chairman of DCS Group, Hang has another prediction. He believes stablecoins could eventually replace fiat currencies in a growing share of payments.

During a conversation with Vincent Fong on the Fintech Fireside Asia podcast, Hang looked back on the experiences that shaped his thinking, sharing some rather unusual stories along the way.

Hang joined UnionPay in 2006 and later moved to New York to help expand its acceptance network across the Americas.

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