Interviewed by Foo Boon Ping
As wallets, instant payments and embedded finance reshape how customers interact with payments across Asia Pacific, card issuance is often assumed to be losing relevance. David Lim of Alliance Bank Malaysia, Anshul Sabherwal of Standard Chartered and Andrew Murray of FIS examine how issuance is being repositioned to support credit, control and engagement in a wallet-first payments ecosystem.
Across Asia Pacific, the way customers initiate and experience payments has changed dramatically in the recent past. Digital wallets, super-apps and instant payment schemes increasingly sit between the customer and the underlying funding source. In many markets, customers transact daily without consciously selecting a card, reinforcing the perception that card issuance is becoming less relevant.
David Lim, head of credit card and personal loan product development at Alliance Bank Malaysia, Anshul Sabherwal, managing director and head of credit cards, personal loans and payments at Standard Chartered Bank Hong Kong, and Andrew Murray, vice president, international banking and payments at FIS, approached this shift from different institutional vantage points. Yet all three challenged the assumption that reduced visibility equates to reduced importance.
They described card issuance as being reshaped rather than displaced. As customer interfaces proliferate, cards increasingly operate beneath the surface as the funding layer for wallets, the credit instrument behind instalments and a key mechanism for authorisation and control across channels.
This transition places new demands on issuers. Issuing could no longer be treated as a static product defined by form factor. It has to function as programmable infrastructure that could be provisioned instantly, embedded within partner ecosystems and governed consistently across markets and devices.
Examining wallets, programmability, issuing architecture, tokenisation and growth, Lim, Sabherwal and Murray set out how card issuance is being repositioned within a wallet-first payments ecosystem and why it remains strategically central.
Wallets and instant payments are reshaping, not removing, card issuance
The rapid adoption of wallets and instant payments alters how customers initiate transactions, particularly in mobile-first Asian markets. For everyday use cases, wallets often abstract the funding source entirely, leading to the impression that cards are no longer central to the payment experience.
Lim described how this abstraction has changed acquisition and engagement models at Alliance Bank Malaysia. A growing share of new card relationships now begins with virtual credentials rather than physical cards. One prominent example is the bank’s partnership with Touch ’n Go, which serves around 25 million users. Through Touch ’n Go and eight additional ecosystem partners, Alliance Bank embeds virtual credit cards directly into non-bank journeys, allowing customers to transact immediately upon approval.
Lim explained that this immediacy fundamentally changes how issuers observe behaviour. Instead of waiting weeks for card delivery and first use, transaction patterns emerge almost instantly. He noted that this early visibility allows the bank to assess engagement quality and credit usage much earlier in the customer lifecycle than is previously possible.
He further explained how virtual issuance is complemented by dynamic card numbers, which generate temporary or transaction-specific credentials. These could be limited to a single merchant, a single transaction or a short time window, significantly reducing exposure in the event of compromise. Lim stated that this feature alone has been taken up by around 80,000 users, reflecting customer demand for greater control over subscriptions and recurring payments.
Murray added that from a technology perspective, wallets and instant payments have increased issuing complexity rather than reduce it. Issuers now have to support instant provisioning, multiple credential types and real-time controls as standard capabilities. Cards are becoming less visible precisely because they are being embedded more deeply into payment journeys, increasing their infrastructural role.
Programmable issuing places governance ahead of features
As digital issuance becomes standard, issuers will place greater emphasis on programmability. This refers to the ability to configure issuing rules dynamically and expose them through application programming interfaces (APIs) so that cards could be embedded into partner ecosystems and third-party platforms.
Sabherwal stressed that while partner-led distribution demands flexibility, accountability for customer outcomes, compliance and risk remains firmly with the bank. Distribution could be extended, but responsibility could not. In ecosystems where banks operate behind airlines, wallets or super-apps, governance becomes more important than the speed of feature deployment.
He pointed to co-branded and ecosystem relationships, including those involving Cathay Pacific, where cards are integrated into broader engagement and loyalty journeys. Sabherwal explained that propositions of this nature require controlled launches to protect brand integrity and manage regulatory exposure as customer volumes scale.
Murray reinforced this by observing that many issuers underestimate the operational implications of programmability. Exposing interfaces is only the surface layer. True programmability requires disciplined governance over how rules are introduced, tested and expanded across the issuing lifecycle.
Lim described how Alliance Bank operationalises this discipline through greyscaling. New ecosystem launches are introduced in tightly controlled phases, starting with small percentages of eligible customers before being expanded incrementally. He explained that moving from limited exposure to broader availability allows systems, operations teams and risk controls to stabilise before full-scale rollout.
Merchant interchange and the economics of wallet-funded cards
A related concern raised during the discussion was whether cards functioning as funding sources for wallets increase merchant costs through higher interchange. Lim addressed this directly in the context of Malaysia, where interchange is regulated and capped. He explained that Bank Negara Malaysia sets a ceiling of around 0.6%, which limits the extent to which card-based wallet funding can raise merchant acceptance costs.
Lim further clarified that in practice, many wallet operators do not pass these costs to merchants. Instead, they apply convenience or service fees to end users, which can be as high as around 1% for certain use cases. From the issuer’s perspective, he noted that this structure does not materially increase cost exposure because interchange remains within regulatory limits.
Sabherwal added that issuers do not control merchant pricing decisions, which are shaped by scheme rules, wallet economics and market structure. He said that interchange dynamics vary significantly by transaction type and geography, reinforcing the need for issuers to innovate within existing economic constraints rather than attempt to reprice them.
Murray reinforced that from a platform standpoint, embedding cards into wallets shifts complexity upstream rather than eliminating it. Issuers still have to manage authorisation, settlement and risk in real time, regardless of how fees are distributed between merchants, wallets and consumers.
Modern issuing stacks expose architectural constraints
The shift towards instant, embedded and programmable issuing exposes limitations in legacy issuing architectures. Systems designed for static products and infrequent change struggle to support real-time configuration, orchestration and rapid iteration across channels.
Murray framed issuing increasingly as an orchestration challenge rather than a pure processing function. He noted that platforms have to be capable of supporting population-level scale while maintaining resilience, cyber security and fraud controls. In this context, phased deployment becomes essential to protecting system stability.
Lim highlighted that design decisions made early in Alliance Bank’s transformation had an outsized impact. Standardising origination and virtual card issuance simplify downstream integration as new partners and use cases are added. This reduces complexity as scale increases.
Sabherwal added that fragmentation between cards, instalments and payments creates inefficiencies, particularly at scale. When these capabilities are managed in silos, customer experience suffers and operational costs rise. A modern issuing stack therefore has to support integration across functions rather than treat them as discrete products.
Together, their perspectives underline architecture as a strategic constraint. Issuers that treat issuing as modular infrastructure are better positioned to adapt to evolving payment environments than those that continue to optimise around legacy product boundaries.
Balancing innovation, risk and regulation in a tokenised world
Tokenisation and real-time credentials have become foundational to digital issuance, enabling instant activation and enhanced security. At the same time, these capabilities introduce new operational and regulatory considerations that issuers have to manage carefully.
Lim noted that expanding the use of tokenised credentials increases regulatory scrutiny, particularly around authentication, fraud prevention and consumer protection. He emphasised that speed and compliance cannot be treated as sequential priorities.
Sabherwal highlighted the uneven regulatory landscape surrounding tokenisation. While technical standards may be global, supervisory expectations remain market-specific. As a result, global issuers adopt structured divergence in how tokenisation and credential management are implemented across jurisdictions.
Murray pointed to lifecycle management as a frequent blind spot. Managing the issuance, suspension and replacement of credentials across devices and merchants requires orchestration rather than point solutions. These challenges often surface only after scale is reached.
Taken together, these views show that tokenisation is reshaping governance requirements across the issuing lifecycle, forcing issuers to balance innovation with operational resilience and regulatory alignment.
Repositioning issuance as a growth engine
As margins tighten and payment options proliferate, issuers are reassessing how card issuance contribute to growth. Lim, Sabherwal and Murray described issuance less as a standalone revenue product and more as an enabling layer that supports broader engagement.
Sabherwal explained that growth increasingly emerges when cards are combined with instalments, payments and cross-border capabilities. In this configuration, issuance supports flexibility and customer choice rather than competes directly with dominant wallet interfaces such as Alipay.
Murray observed that issuers who successfully reposition issuance invest in reusable infrastructure. Instead of building bespoke solutions for each initiative, they design capabilities that could be leveraged repeatedly across retail and corporate use cases.
Lim concluded that for mid-sized banks, sustainable growth depended on discipline. As payment environments fragment, focusing on engagement quality and risk-adjusted returns becomes more important than pursuing scale alone.
This disciplined approach allows cards to remain relevant not as a legacy product, but as a flexible mechanism supporting credit access, payments and long-term customer relationships.
Customer trust and behavioural inertia in digital issuance
Another issue raised concerned whether customers are resistant to adopting new payment technologies, particularly as issuance becomes more digital and abstracted. Murray addressed this by reframing the question away from technology adoption and towards expectation. He said that customers already assume payments will work instantly, securely and invisibly, and that perceived inertia often reflects internal organisational hesitation rather than customer reluctance.
Lim approached the issue from a trust and control perspective. He explained that customers are more willing to adopt new issuance models when those models clearly improve safety and transparency. Features such as dynamic card numbers and merchant-specific controls reduce anxiety around fraud and subscriptions, making digital credentials feel more secure than traditional plastic cards.
Sabherwal emphasised that adoption is driven by relevance rather than novelty. He said customers do not resist technology per se, but disengage when products fail to solve real problems or offer meaningful choice. In his view, successful issuing strategies focus on flexibility and usefulness, allowing customers to adopt new capabilities at their own pace.
Together, their responses suggest that customer inertia is less a barrier to digital issuance than a signal for issuers to design technologies that are intuitive, trustworthy and embedded naturally into everyday payment journeys.
Infrastructure, not visibility, defines relevance
The evolution of card issuance reflects a broader shift in how value is created within payments. Visibility at the point of interaction matters less than the ability to support complex, distributed journeys reliably and at scale.
Lim emphasised that cards remain central to funding and credit decisions even when customers interacted primarily through wallets and partner platforms. Sabherwal highlighted integration across cards, instalments and payments as essential to sustaining engagement and growth in fragmented ecosystems. Murray framed issuance as infrastructure that has to scale with discipline as complexity increases.
Their perspectives converged on a consistent reality. Card issuance is becoming less visible, but more indispensable. Its long-term relevance will be defined not by form factor, but by how effectively it functions as programmable, well-governed infrastructure embedded within a wallet-first payments ecosystem.
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