INSIGHTS FROM THE GFTN JAPAN FINANCIAL TECHNOLOGY FORUM 2025
The GFTN Japan Financial Forum was held between March 3-7th at the shimmering CBD skyscraper of Bellesalle, Nihonbashi and the majestic thirteen-hundred-year-old Kanda Myojin Shrine.
The setting was a mixture of ultra-modern and traditional, just like the diverse event agenda.
Tim Kolbe, Founder and Chief Designer at Eight Inc, who developed the globally successful Apple retail store concept provided a great opening speech.
Tim explained how it is so important to design products for a human experience and highlighted how the secret to value creation is to do the brave thing. He highlighted how we should all be aware of following best practice as it may cause our offering to look like everybody else.
There were lots of discussions around the geopolitical environment and many conference attendees were digesting the impact of some of the tariffs recently announced by the US government.
It was clear that Japan is at an inflection point with inflation and higher interest rates coming. That said ongoing US China tensions create unprecedented business opportunities for Japan.
There were lots of sessions on the evolving nature of cross border payment systems, Japan as a start-up location and the emergence of stablecoin utilisation.
I was surprised to here that the annual stablecoin transaction volume processed last year was U$15 trillion, surpassing credit card spend for the first time
With a $200 Billion stablecoin market capital, compared to an $18 trillion fiat money market capital, stablecoins are steadily chipping away at traditional finance transactions.
Conference attendees were generally bullish on the crypto marketplace with the new crypto friendly government in place in the US and the appointment of David Sacks as lead of US government crypto and AI.
Senior Executives from many leading banking and payment companies still only rated the efficiency of the current global cross border money transfer system at between 3 to 5 out of 10. Getting more regulatory clarity on crypto’s standards and overarching governance in the financial ecosystem was a strong demand request from many industry participants across multiple geographies.
Many attendees also felt there would be rapid product innovation on the back of more crypto regulatory clarity.
There were some fascinating sessions on the emergence of AI, with a fact that many high growth ten person companies will emerge. We are starting to see some already.
There were some great examples of advertising, marketing and sales AI start-ups emerging which gave me great confidence on what we are creating in the Microsoft AI start up program with www.transformsales.ai
For me it was great to further discuss and validate what we are building with investors, potential customers and partners.
The forum was a great opportunity to meet many existing customers who have rolled out the Realise the Revenues sales growth program. In addition, we won two new agreements with new global customers to implement the program in the months ahead.
The full day of Founders stories were excellent and showed what grit and determination is required to succeed in the start-up world. I could relate deeply to the many war stories that were highlighted including the successful story of Japanese fintech Paidy, who were acquired by Paypal for U$2.7 billion after a long and challenging journey.
The event was a wonderful merging of founders, policymakers, regulators and SVPs from established institutions all focused on creating a more equitable and efficient global financial infrastructure for all.
I’m already looking forward to the event next year.
Arigatou gozaimasu Japan!
