14/10/2026

BIZ & FINANCE WEDNESDAY | OCT 14, 2026

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Visa receives nod to prepare for domestic business in China BEIJING: US payments firm Visa has received approval from China’s central bank to begin preparations for a domestic bank card clearing institution in the country, ending years of waiting to tap into one of the world’s largest payment markets. The move marks a major step for Visa to join rivals American Express and Mastercard in operating bank card clearing services in China and represents a further opening up of the nation’s tightly controlled financial sector. The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) issued an administrative approval to Visa Information Technology (Beijing) Co Ltd permitting it to begin preparatory work, according to the central bank’s website. Visa Information Technology (Beijing) is a foreign-invested enterprise established in China by Visa. “The approval of our Application to Prepare marks a significant step forward in Visa’s long standing commitment to China,” Visa CEO Ryan McInerney said in a statement yesterday. The approval comes after US President Donald Trump’s summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping earlier this year in China, which included more than a dozen CEOs of top US companies, including those of Mastercard and Visa. “We greatly appreciate the important role of the leaders of the United States and China in pursuing a constructive and strategically stable relationship between the world’s largest economies,” McInerney said. Visa must complete its preparations within one year, after which it can apply to open for business, the PBOC said. The central bank, together with the nation’s top banking regulator, will review the application and, if it approves, issue a bank card clearing business licence. – Reuters Singapore’s DayOne gets RM15b financing for expansion in Malaysia SINGAPORE: Singapore-based data centre developer DayOne said yesterday it secured an additional RM15 billion in financing from a consortium of seven banks, including DBS Group and Standard Chartered, to fund its expansion in Malaysia. he financing, consisting of a US$2.4 billion (RM9.8 billion) offshore term loan facility and RM5.5 billion Murabahah facility, expands on a previously granted RM15 billion loan in 2025. The new loan will be used to fund DayOne’s expansion of hyperscale data centre capacity in Johor, Malaysia’s key data centre destination. The country has emerged as Southeast Asia’s fastest-growing data centre hub, attracting billions of dollars in investment from global technology firms including Amazon, Google and Microsoft. The loan was arranged by a seven-bank consortium that also included Malaysia’s CIMB Group Holdings, Maybank, France’s Crédit Agricole CIB, Singapore’s Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp and United Overseas Bank. – Reuters

IMF warns of ‘elevated risks’ to global financial system SINKING FEELING ... An electronic screen shows the closing number of South Korea’s benchmark stock index Kospi in a dealing room at the Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul yesterday. Seoul, Tokyo and Taipei led losses across Asian stock markets as technology firms plunged on fresh worries about the outlook for the AI investment boom. Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 fell 1.82% and Taipei’s Taiex lost 1.95%. – AFPPIC

In one widely covered incident in July, AI agents developed by US firm OpenAI hacked Hugging Face, an AI model and application library, as the autonomous software escaped its confined testing environment. As AI capabilities continue to improve, the risk of successful cyberattacks on “critical financial institutions or market infrastructure” is getting “worse”, the IMF report said. The “impact could be severe as rapid digitization has increased the attack surface”. Cyber threats are more menacing in emerging markets that have not allocated sufficient resources for prevention, Caio Ferreira, deputy division chief at the IMF’s Monetary and Capital Markets Department, said at the news conference. While frontier AI models could be used to stage such attacks, they also have a role to play in cyber defence, the report said. Another growing risk to the global financial system is a spike in bond yields, which could trigger severe shocks due to the “foundational importance of sovereign bond markets”, the report said. “Bond markets are susceptible to further rises in energy prices reigniting inflation and forcing the tightening of monetary policy.” – AFP

o International Monetary Fund cites AI market correction, cyber threats as potential perils with ‘severe’ consequences

BANGKOK: The International Monetary Fund (IMF) yesterday warned of “elevated” risks faced by the global financial system, with potential perils including an AI-related market correction and cyber threats that could have “severe” consequences. The cautionary message was delivered by the IMF’s latest Global Financial Stability Report, published on the second day of its annual gatherings with the World Bank, held this year in Thailand’s capital, Bangkok. “These risks are plausible near-term catalysts for a sharp tightening of financial conditions and market turmoil,” the report said. The recent boom in artificial intelligence – and the related rush to manufacture semiconductors and build data centres – has provided a boost to global growth despite geopolitical pressures including the Middle East war. However, “growing evidence suggests that AI capabilities can be delivered at lower investment levels ... or that potential economic

gains may not be as large as expected,” the IMF warned. “Weaker or less durable AI investments and profitability could be a shock that triggers a market correction.” And while AI is increasingly a source of economic vitality globally, it is also presenting unprecedented risks, the Fund said. “Severe cyber incidents could undermine market confidence and disrupt critical financial market infrastructure and operations,” it said. The risks posed by cyber threats to the financial system are both “known and very much unknown”, Athanasios Vamvakidis, deputy director of the IMF’s Monetary and Capital Markets Department, told reporters after the report’s launch. “The policy priority should be to strengthen resilience before new shocks hit the economy,” Vamvakidis said. The report adds to growing worries about AI and its wide-ranging impact on labour markets, education and inequality.

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India’s tough FX measures rattle banks, trigger unintended consequences MUMBAI: A series of tough regulatory steps by the Indian central bank, aimed at supporting the rupee, is leading to unintended consequences, with several lenders holding back on quoting dollar-rupee forwards, according to eight bankers. The measures and a heightened scrutiny of dollar purchases have led to uncertainty about the scope of the new rules and whether more curbs may be in the offing, the bankers said. their own assets and liabilities. The RBI has also told banks to offer non-deliverable contracts to clients only for protecting underlying exposures. venue and cost of dollar demand, but they cannot eliminate genuine demand generated by trade, hedging requirements or capital outflows,”he said. The RBI did not respond to an email seeking comment on its moves and the market reaction. Yesterday, at least eight large lenders, spanning state-run, private and foreign banks, held back from quoting dollar/rupee forwards in early trading, according to conversations with Reuters reporters. liabilities. The circular says the margin is applicable for all rupee derivative contracts for which lenders purchase foreign currency. Bankers interpreted the provision as extending the margin requirement to interbank transactions, prompting them to reconsider quoting dollar/rupee forwards. However, a person familiar with the RBI’s thinking said this interpretation was incorrect, adding that derivatives for market-making or trading were outside the scope of the circular. The curbs followed a drop in the rupee to near record lows of 96.96 against the dollar last week, despite the central bank raising interest rates for the first time in nearly four years. After the measures, the currency has recovered to 95.25. “The Reserve Bank of India has moved from signalling that the rupee’s weakness may be excessive to directly restraining dollar demand and speculative activity in the FX market,” said Mitul Kotecha, head of FX & EM macro strategy Asia at Barclays. “Such measures can influence the timing, The reluctance stemmed from a circular from Monday night, which mandated banks to build a risk reserve for rupee derivative contracts used to hedge the currency risk on their own assets and Three of the eight banks resumed quoting forwards following a bilateral clarification from the RBI, according to the bankers. – Reuters Since Saturday, the Reserve Bank of Indisa (RBI) has rerouted oil dollar demand to a special facility, imposed a cash margin for derivatives used to hedge some merchant transactions and sub sequently extended the margin to banks hedging