Smartphones to transform Asia’s payments scene

A man wearing a face mask uses a dollar sign decorated smartphone to take picture at an outdoor shopping mall in Beijing, Thursday, Sept. 15, 2022. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

UNREALISTIC as it was technically, the idea of a pan-Asian currency always had some political support: Since 2005, the Japanese have published the exchange value of something called the Asian monetary unit, a precursor to what would one day become the region’s equivalent of the euro.

The debt crisis in southern Europe – and the threat it posed to the single currency in the early part of the last decade – ended that pipe dream.