Sarah Chew covers Southeast Asia’s technology, fintech, digital policy, and AI adoption landscape for RECATOOLS. Her work focuses on how regulation, platform shifts, and emerging technologies affect businesses, consumers, and digital markets across Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines.

169
Articles
ASEAN Tech
Primary beat
May 2026
Writing since
~1124 min
Total reading
All 169 ASEAN Tech 97 Finance 65 Business 4 AI & ML 3

Articles Showing 101–110 of 169

A person at a white desk resting one hand on a pink calculator, with printed slips, receipts and a filled-in form spread out in front of them.
Finance

Philippine Salary Deductions Explained (2026): SSS, PhilHealth, Pag-IBIG and Tax

Your offer says ₱30,000 and your payslip says ₱26,542.45. Here is exactly where the rest goes — the three contributions that are not tax, the one that is, and why the taxman looks at ₱27,550 rather than ₱30,000.

29 Aug 2026 · 5 min read
Hanoi skyline at dusk, the city where Vietnam pressed Qualcomm and Samsung for research investment
ASEAN Tech

Vietnam Wants Design Work Now, Not Just Assembly

Hanoi pressed Qualcomm and Samsung to deepen AI and semiconductor investment. The $500bn Samsung export figure being quoted is cumulative over three decades, not annual, and the distinction changes the argument.

29 Aug 2026 · 7 min read
Tokyo waterfront towers lit up at night, reflected in the water below.
Finance

SoftBank Is Refinancing Its OpenAI Bet for the Fourth Time

A $40bn bridge, a $10-20bn bond sale, a record ¥1tn retail issue and a $10bn margin loan against the stake itself. The yield the bonds fetch will be the first independent verdict on this risk.

27 Aug 2026 · 7 min read
The Manila skyline at sunset, with high-rise towers standing above the surrounding city.
ASEAN Tech

Two Incidents Account for Half of the Philippines' 335 Million Exposed Records

Credentials are not records, records are not people, and 255 incidents are not evenly distributed. Reading Viettel's H1 figures for what they actually count changes what a policymaker should do about them.

26 Aug 2026 · 7 min read
A ceramic processor package with a gold lid and rows of gold contact pins, on a white background.
Business

Japan's Extra $944m for Rapidus Is a Budget Request, Not a Cheque

The money is sought in METI's fiscal 2027 budget, and its purpose is to raise the company's capital so banks will lend. That is leverage, not a construction subsidy — and it leaves the customer question open.

26 Aug 2026 · 7 min read
Printed divider tabs standing in a card index box, each labelled with a different category
ASEAN Tech

Your Database Has One Collation for Southeast Asia

MySQL 8 ships 89 collations for utf8mb4 and exactly one is for a Southeast Asian language. Five of them sorted the same six Vietnamese names into four different orders, and the default disagrees with the Vietnamese one.

23 Aug 2026 · 7 min read
A pair of small craft scissors with zigzag blades lying open on a plain white background
ASEAN Tech

What a Character Limit Does to Khmer

Truncation looks like the simplest thing a program does, until the same twenty-character limit hands an English reader nineteen characters and a Khmer reader nine. Cutting by bytes corrupted four of the six scripts we tested outright.

23 Aug 2026 · 6 min read
A street in central Hanoi seen from above, illustrating a report on Vietnam's Law on Artificial Intelligence and its 2027 compliance deadlines.
ASEAN Tech

Vietnam's AI Law Has Been In Force Since March, And The Deadlines Start Next Year

Southeast Asia's first standalone AI law took effect on 1 March, applies to foreign as well as domestic entities, and gives most existing providers until March 2027 — September 2027 in health, education and finance.

23 Aug 2026 · 8 min read
Hands over a document being signed across a desk, illustrating a report on a compute-collateralised financing structure backed by Broadcom guarantees.
Finance

Broadcom Guaranteed The Resale Value Of Its Own Chips To Get A $35bn Loan Priced

The AI XPV platform raised debt through a vehicle that buys accelerators and leases them to Anthropic. A deficiency guarantee and a residual value backstop from Broadcom took the senior tranches to about 5.75 per cent.

23 Aug 2026 · 9 min read
A contactless payment being made with a phone at a card terminal, illustrating a report on the Nexus project to link instant payment systems across Asia.
ASEAN Tech

The Project Linking ASEAN's Payment Systems Has A Company, A Tender And Two Go-Live Dates

Nexus would connect India's UPI, Singapore's PayNow and Thailand's PromptPay through one hub. Governance sits in a Singapore-incorporated entity, an operator tender is out, and the launch year is reported as both 2026 and 2027.

22 Aug 2026 · 8 min read
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