E-learning en Radiología

For developing countries including Thailand, financial services have been inaccessible for a large portion of the population. Banks and other financial institutions have not been able to sufficiently, and profitably provide financial services to all consumers, especially those low- volume transactions. Therefore, millions of people have relied exclusively on cash and direct exchanges until recently. While a large portion of the population may have underserved by the traditional banking system, the emergence of the internet and mobile technology is changing this.

While The internet was invented since the 1960s, it has just reached most of the people in developing countries through the adoption of internet-enabled phone service in the past decade. Internet-enabled phone service is more affordable and much more accessible for poor people, especially those in remote rural areas. Mobile services in Thailand are relatively accessible. More than 55 million people or 80 percent of the population use mobile phones and have access to the internet.228

The internet has changed the way we live in many ways including how we conduct our financial transactions. Policymakers, businesses, and scholars all realized the benefits of the internet and mobile technology as a vital tool to promote financial inclusion for all segments of society. More and more online financial services have begun to compete with brick-and-mortar institutions which rely heavily on physical presence and physical contacts between financial institutions and financial consumers.

1. Technology at the Government Level

The government of Thailand has recently pushed a new initiative so-called Thailand 4.0 in 2014 to free Thailand from a middle-income trap by moving the nation from a manufacturing- based economy to a high-tech economy. One of the main focuses of Thailand 4.0 is fintech industry. The government has passed several laws and regulations and encourage regulators, especially the Bank of Thailand to support the initiative. One of the recent achievements is PromptPay which a countrywide transfer and payment system called launched by the Bank of Thailand in 2017.

PromptPay allows account holders of all 15 commercial and four government banks in Thailand to transfer fund by using national identification card number or mobile phone number in place of the bank account number. PromptPay also charges no or very low service fee from nothing to ten baht (around $0.30) per transaction. PromptPay is the quintessence of the Bank of Thailand's awareness of the importance of internet and mobile technology on the financial system. The Bank of Thailand also established a regulatory sandbox in 2017 to test novel financial products and services for 6 to 12 months before releasing to the public. For instance, mobile Quick Response (QR) Code was one of the first product from this regulatory sandbox.229

228 _{Center for Data Science, Technology, and Innovation, Statistics on Information and Communication Technology,}

The Ministry of Science and Technology Thailand, http://stiic.sti.or.th/stat/ind-it/ (Last visited Jan. 18, 2019).

229 _{Presentation on Payment & FinTech Development in Thailand on 16 April 2018 by Financial Technology}

This could mean that the Bank of Thailand anticipates that internet and mobile financial service might soon take off and dominate the financial industry in Thailand.

2. Formal Financial Institutions and the Technology

Besides the government effort, all of fourteen commercial banks in Thailand have also adapted and invested in online and mobile banking. Over the past four years, commercial banks in Thailand have closed down over 300 branches. Kasikornbank (KBank), the fourth largest bank in Thailand by assets and the largest by market capitalization, has closed more than 100 of its branches and invested 8 billion baht ($245 million) in KVision that incorporate digital banking, artificial intelligence, and big data on its banking platform. Unsurprisingly, Kbank's mobile banking application claimed the top spot in 2017 with 6.5 million users or 22 percent of the market trailing SCB's application which came second with a 9 percent market share. With great effort to adopt internet and mobile technology, Thailand ranks first in the world in terms of mobile banking users per internet users at 74 percent while Sweden comes second at 71

percent.230 _{Indeed, the bank revolution in Thailand has been so successful that online and mobile} applications by banks themselves outcompeted the financial products and services offered by technology companies. For instance, popular services like Apple Pay, Venmo, Paypal, or Square are far less popular than online and mobile banking services provided directly by Thai banks.

Most online and mobile banking platforms provide impressively comprehensive services including check deposit, pay bills, transfer, trading stocks and funds allowing people to conduct most of the banking activities on their mobile phones. However, commercial banks and other financial institutions have yet been able to provide online lending services because the Bank of Thailand still requires commercial banks to test their electronic customer identity verification system which is often referred to as electronic know-your-customer (e-KYC) process in the Bank of Thailand's regulatory sandbox for 6 to 12 months.231 _{As of now, commercial banks are still} required to have human agents to talk to loan applicants (at least via call center) and obtain signed hardcopies of all documents necessary for the loan approval process.232

3. Technology in the Hands of the People

The use of the internet and internet-enabled mobile services are not just limited to formal financial institutions, ordinary people also incorporate the internet and mobile technology, especially social media, and social platforms into every aspect of their lives including financial activities. In fact, Thailand is currently one of the top countries in terms of social media users and time spent on social media. According to the Digital 2018 Global Overview Report, Thai people spent as much as 3 hours and 10 minutes per day on the internet ranking fourth in the world just behind the Philippines, Brazil, and Indonesia.233 _{At the same time, Thailand ranked} tenth in terms of social media penetration where 74 percent of the population had a social media account and actively used social media every month.234 _{The report also showed that Thailand had}

230 _{Digital 2019: Thailand, Thais Lead the World in the Mobile Banking Per Capita (in Thai).}

https://www.google.com/amp/s/droidsans.com/thailand-mobile-banking-2019-to-cashless-society/amp/ (Last visited Feb. 24, 2019).

231 _{Note that The Bank of Thailand announced that it would release the e-KYC process from its regulatory sandbox}

by 2019 and require each commercial bank to test its process before start using the process with actual customers.

232 _{Bank of Thailand, Standards for Regulating Special Financial Institution- Phase II (Presentation Jan. 16, 2018),}

https://www.bot.or.th/Thai/FinancialInstitutions/PruReg_HB/Documents/SFIs%20Phase2/PPT%20hearing%20phas e2_Final.pdf (Last visited Jan. 18, 2019).

233 _{Simon Kemp, Digital in 2018: World’s Internet Users Pass the 4 Billion Mark, We Are Social,}

https://wearesocial.com/blog/2018/01/global-digital-report-2018 (Last visited Jan 17, 2019).

48 million user accounts where 22 user accounts were from Bangkok.235 _{Similarly, the number} of active users of LINE which is Thailand's number-one messaging application reached 42 million in 2018.236

These figures are not surprising considering that a large portion of the Thai population does everything on social media, particularly Facebook and LINE, for multiple purposes from communicating, purchasing goods and services, dating, to conducting financial activities such as sending money, borrowing, and lending from other social media users. Networks or communities of internet users in Thailand have also immensely expanded. Either an official Facebook page of a celebrity or a Facebook group that gathers borrowers and lenders, these social-media enable groups to enable people who live in different backgrounds and locations to virtually interact with each other.

Online ROSCA is the quintessence of social media which facilitates lending and

fundraising practices on the internet. Because ROSCAs are operated outside the formal banking regulations, operators of online ROSCAs have not been subject to regulations and oversights, especially the Bank of Thailand Regulatory sandbox, like other online financial services do. As a result, a large number of online ROSCAs spontaneously hit the ground and skyrocketed over the past few years. Online ROSCAs integrate online and mobile technology to every aspect of their operation including formation, screening, payment, collection, and enforcement.