LianLian Global CEO Tim Shen to Speak at Hong Kong FinTech Week 2025 on AI-Powered Innovations in Cross-Border Payments and Trade

Wed, 05 Nov 2025 10:30:00 +0800

HONG KONG, Nov. 5, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Hong Kong FinTech Week 2025, the region's leading showcase for digital finance and payment innovation, opened on November 3 in Hong Kong, China. The event brought together 37,000 attendees from more than 100 economies, as well as over 800 industry experts and 700 exhibiting organizations. Together, they explored the latest technology developments and identified new opportunities driving innovation and business growth. 

This year's event also featured 11 thematic forums addressing critical policy, technology, and industry issues shaping the innovation landscape. Executives from global financial institutions, payment providers, and technology platforms shared in-depth analysis and outlooks, helping attendees gain perspective on emerging trends and supporting collaboration across adjacent financial-services sectors.

Tim Shen, CEO of LianLian Global, participated participated in the Digital Finance Forum, where he joined Hay Yip, Chief Strategy Officer & Chief of Staff of FundPark, and Andrea Baronchelli, CEO & Co-Founder of Aspire. The group focused on "Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Big Data Innovation in Cross-Border Trade and SME Financing" during a dedicated session.

"In today's digital economy, AI and big data have become essential to business operations—they are transforming how companies secure financing, manage capital, and compete internationally," said Tim Shen. "These technologies now form a foundational layer that underpins cross-border payment flows, supports global trade growth and enables financing for SMEs."

He illustrated the discussion with common payment challenges experienced by SMEs in cross-border trade. He noted that differences in payment standards, currencies and technologies across markets—together with the often-fragmented nature of payment platforms—frequently lead to high costs, operational complexity and delays for SMEs. Applying AI and modern payment channels, he explained, can help lower expenses, improve transparency and accelerate settlement.

"As an established provider in the cross-border payments and trade sector, LianLian Global is dedicated to integrating digital and intelligent technology across the global commerce ecosystem, continuously improving our end-to-end cross-border payment solutions," said Tim Shen. "By adopting digital and intelligent solutions, we have streamlined the entire payment process for greater efficiency. Through service and technology innovation, we aim to help SMEs gain operational strengths—such as enhanced visibility and quicker access to liquidity—that support their worldwide expansion with capabilities once available mainly to larger corporations."

Lianlian has developed its own dedicated technology platform for global trade, built on the company's payments, treasury and compliance expertise and supported by years of experience in big data, AI, cloud computing and blockchain. The platform delivers integrated, single-platform solutions—including payments, transfers, global fund distribution, intelligent foreign exchange processing and risk management—addressing varied demands from clients across sectors and business sizes. In 2025, Lianlian completed the private deployment of the DeepSeek large language model and has begun applying it across several core functions such as business operations, R&D and office productivity.

Shen said that Lianlian has built an AI-driven service system for payments that incorporates AI-assisted KYC, KYB, KYT and operational support. "For KYC and KYB reviews, we now use AI agents to retrieve negative data and monitor high-risk corporate information, which increases screening efficiency and supports earlier, more accurate risk detection," he noted. "In KYT processes, AI automatically compares information flows and cross-validates buyer-seller relationships, strengthening transaction monitoring as well as anti-fraud and anti-money-laundering controls while reducing manual effort." In cross-border intelligent operations, LianLian Global introduced LOOP AI, a service platform powered by AI for e-commerce merchants. Integrated with DeepSeek's large language model, LOOP AI helps sellers quickly produce precise and engaging product descriptions and localized marketing content, increasing product visibility and sales conversion on major e-commerce platforms and search engines to support merchant growth in cross-border trade.

He added that AI goes beyond improving efficiency to reshape how SMEs compete internationally. "By uniting our payments infrastructure with AI capabilities, we are confident in building a more inclusive, innovative and efficient financial ecosystem—enabling SMEs to operate with the intelligence and agility of larger global firms," Shen said. "We remain focused on advancing global trade through big data and AI-enabled financial services, allowing businesses everywhere to engage in the global economy's sustainable growth with reduced barriers and increased confidence."

Michele Fung, Head of LianLian Global Hong Kong, and Mark Ma, Head of Banking Partnership at LianLian Global, also spoke at the Digital Finance Forum. They shared insights on how Lianlian uses technology-led solutions and ecosystem partnerships to help businesses overcome cross-border payment challenges and move forward with their global expansion plans.