US card networks may get to tap small Indian retailers who otherwise can’t afford them. On that hangs a tale of rivals putting profit before parochialism. Andy Mukherjee is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering industrial companies and financial services in Asia. Previously, he worked for Reuters, the Straits Times and Bloomberg News. @andymukherjee70 India’s dealings with American card networks has been frosty. Visa Inc. and Mastercard Inc. have grumbled to Washington about the lack of a...

It tells you something about the priorities of Southeast Asia's largest bank when it announces a hackathon to quickly recruit 100 budding technologists. DBS Group Holdings Ltd. hired the same number last year, but this year its needs are spread over a wider skill set, including user-interface design and mobile-application development, even scrum mastery, which, I understand, has nothing to do with rugby. All banks hire techies to manage back-end applications. However, the transformation at...

From fish sauce to dairy and beer, lumpy investment bets in Vietnam have typically been placed on the country’s teeming working class and its growing propensity to consume. Warburg Pincus has already been there and done that. The U.S. buyout firm is now using its web of connections to wager on the nation's new rich. The $370 million check it's writing for an undisclosed stake in Techcombank puts Warburg on the ground floor of a new cycle of wealth creation. The lender is focused on serving...

India's unreformed banking system needs a massive privatization drive. The sooner this dawns on authorities, the better for taxpayers, investors and borrowers. Exhibit A is an index of share prices of state-run banks. Back in the Doghouse Indian state-run bank shareholders were exuberant about a $32 billion recap; despondency has now displaced optimism Nifty PSU Bank Index Source: Bloomberg It took one $2 billion fraud at government-owned Punjab National Bank to snuff out all the excitement...

The crisis of confidence in Indonesia's legal system has gone on far too long to try to fix things with conventional tools like judicial reforms. When it comes to improving the country's notoriously iffy record in enforcement of contracts, which in Jakarta can cost up to 74 percent of a deal's value versus 9 percent in Iceland, it's time to use blockchain technology. Finding the money wouldn't be hard. The aggrieved parties would themselves gladly invest, and one of them could be Goldman...