Ant Group firms lead Asia media mentions over DBS and Visa

Visa ranked third at 165 whilst Mastercard logged 158.

Ant Group and its international payments businesses were the most frequently mentioned organisations in an analysis of 1,000 articles about cross-border payments in Asia.

Ant Group, Ant International, Alipay and Alipay+ recorded 214 mentions in 2025, according to the The New Era Of Asia’s Cross-Border Payments report by FXC  Intelligence. 

Singapore’s DBS Bank followed with 188 mentions, ahead of Visa with 165 and Mastercard with 158.

Swift received 142 mentions, whilst Wise had 124. India’s National Payments Corporation of India, which operates the Unified Payments Interface, recorded 118 mentions. GrabPay had 112, Airwallex 106 and HSBC 104.

Other widely discussed organisations included Standard Chartered with 98 mentions, China UnionPay with 94, Nium with 87 and GoPay with 82. 

Tencent and WeChat Pay recorded 78 mentions, whilst Singapore’s OCBC Bank had 76.

Slightly more than two-thirds of the organisations mentioned at least 10 times were based in Asia. More than half of the organisations with 10 or more mentions were fintech or payments companies.

Regional fintech firms, including GrabPay, GoPay and India’s Paytm, accounted for more than a quarter of all mentions.

International payments companies such as Nium, Thunes and Western Union also received regular coverage.

The analysis found that much of the reporting focused on links between domestic instant-payment systems. Ant International and NPCI received more coverage as they worked to connect India’s UPI with the Alipay+ cross-border payments network.

The study also found a high level of cross-border activity between Asian markets. Slightly more than half of the 1,000 articles mentioned at least one country or administrative region other than the publication’s home market.

Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and India recorded the highest levels of cross-country references. 

This was partly linked to Project Nexus and the Regional Payment Connectivity initiative, which aims to make payments between participating countries easier and allow transactions in local currencies.

Hong Kong and China were often mentioned in reports about the BIS’s Project mBridge, a wholesale central bank digital currency programme. Coverage also referred to participating markets, including Thailand, the UAE and Saudi Arabia.

China and Vietnam received more joint coverage following an agreement to support interoperable retail QR-code payments.

China and Indonesia were also linked in reports about a planned cross-border QR-payment service due to launch in September. 

Articles published in Singapore and Malaysia mentioned India more often than Indian publications mentioned those markets.

Indian coverage generally focused on other countries only when a specific payment-linking project was involved.

The US was frequently mentioned in regional coverage, but mainly in connection with regulation, the GENIUS Act and geopolitical competition rather than as a direct partner in Asian payment-linking projects.