SiGMA Asia Panel Explores New Growth Opportunities Beyond Saturated Tier-1 Markets

Connected, optimistic, human: a snapshot of hospitality’s future from 750 hoteliers at Mews Unfold

[Amsterdam, 9 June 2026] – Mews, the hospitality operating system, shared findings from a live audience poll held during Mews Unfold 2026, the company’s annual [RL1] hospitality forum. The event brought together more than 750 hoteliers, operators and industry leaders in Amsterdam. Mews polled attendees throughout the day and their answers show how a room of industry experts sees the forces reshaping hospitality: the role of new technology, the place of AI in a people-first business, and the move from fragmented software to connected systems. 

Appetite for new technology is high. 

80% of respondents said they are excited about the role new technologies will play in hospitality. The finding matches Mews’ wider hotelier research, in which 92% said they were optimistic about AI in hospitality.¹ 

That enthusiasm reflects a wider change in what hoteliers expect technology to do. The conversation on stage returned to a single idea: hotels sell the whole trip, not only the room. Guests book an experience and a moment, and the room is one part of it. The opportunity is to serve more of that trip, through new services and partnerships that meet guests where their expectations already sit. Mews’ new partnership with Uber brings ride booking inside the operating system. The trip to and from the property becomes part of the stay, not a separate transaction outside the hotel. Food and beverage, local experiences, transport and wellness are all revenue that leaves through the door today. For hoteliers, the wider experience is where the growth sits. 

Most believe technology will make hospitality more human. 

At the start of the day, 60% of attendees felt that new technology would make hospitality more human. By the close, that figure rose to 80%. The change across a single day of talks, presentations and workshops is clear, and it reframes one of the industry’s oldest worries. 

Many fear that technology erodes the human core of hospitality. The case made at Unfold was the opposite. AI is now hard to avoid, and doing it well is the real test. Technology providers need the right architecture, clean data and sound processes, not more systems stacked on top of one another. Hotels need their data in order and a clear view of where AI helps. Staff need the willingness to change and experiment. Roles will not disappear, but they will change. The front desk agent becomes a host, the revenue manager becomes a strategist. 

Hoteliers are moving from fragmented tools toward connected systems. 

At the start of the day, just over half of attendees (51%) said that having all their tools work together mattered more than assembling best-of-breed point solutions. After Mews introduced the Mews Operating System, 83% said the operating system strategy was the right fit for their business. The two questions are not a direct comparison, but the movement points to a real change in mindset over the day. 

That change sits at the heart of what Unfold set out to argue: For forty years, hotel software has run on a category map of acronyms: PMS, RMS, CRS, CRM, POS. The five product launches at Unfold collapse that map into one platform, one data model and one bill. The comparison made on stage was direct: the iPhone did not improve the phone, it made the old device obsolete. An operating system for hospitality does the same to the old stack. The data suggests that hoteliers increasingly believe that technology can be both seamlessly connected and provide best-in-class capabilities. 

“The results are a clear snapshot of where the industry stands. The appetite for new technology is real, and our customers are optimistic, not anxious,” said Richard Valtr, Founder of Mews. “They see that technology, and AI in particular, will make hospitality more human by giving teams back the time to do what they do best. And they are ready to move on from a category map drawn forty years ago, toward systems that finally work as one. The mandate from this room was clear, and we will deliver on it.” 

“Mews Unfold 2026 was an inspiring gathering of hospitality innovators, industry leaders, and passionate professionals, all coming together to shape the future of hospitality while building meaningful connections.” added Luca Molinari, Hotel Manager at Glamp Nusa. 

Save the date: Mews will return to Amsterdam on May 12, 2027.  

¹ Mews Hotelier Survey, Q1 2026. N=500 hoteliers from US, CA, FR, DE, UK

When Machines Start Paying Machines: The Case for Crypto Infrastructure

New Delhi, 9 June 2026

A new pattern is taking shape in finance, and the crypto industry has quietly become one of its main builders. For years, virtual digital assets were talked about mainly as something to buy, hold and trade. The bigger development now is that the same underlying technology – blockchains and stablecoins – is becoming the engine for a different kind of transaction: one carried out not by a person, but by software acting on that person’s instructions.

These are called agentic payments. An AI agent is a program that can be given a goal – “move my idle savings into a better return each month” or “buy this part from the cheapest supplier who can deliver by Friday” – and then complete it without further input. To finish the task, the agent has to pay or trade. And this is where older systems struggle. A bank card and a card network are designed for a human entering details at a checkout once. They were never built for software making hundreds of tiny transactions a minute, at any hour, across borders.

Crypto rails fill that gap. A stablecoin is a digital token tied to the value of a regular currency such as the dollar or the rupee, so it stays steady rather than swinging like Bitcoin. Because it moves on a blockchain, it can be sent instantly, around the clock, in amounts as small as a fraction of a cent, with spending rules written directly into the code. An agent can be handed a digital wallet with firm limits – spend no more than this, only with these counterparties, only until this date – and then left to act, with every transaction recorded on a shared ledger that anyone can later check.

This is no longer an idea on paper. Globally, the building blocks of agent-driven finance are already in use. Coinbase’s x402 system, which lets software pay for online services in stablecoins, processed roughly 165 million agent transactions within months of launching, and has since been handed to the Linux Foundation with Google, Visa, Mastercard and Amazon among its backers. Stripe, which processes payments for millions of businesses, has launched its own stablecoin-based agent rail. Mastercard paid USD 1.8 billion to acquire a stablecoin infrastructure firm. Juniper Research expects global spending by AI agents to grow from around USD 8 billion in 2026 to USD 1.5 trillion by 2030.

Crypto platforms have turned out to be a natural fit for executing all this, because they already do the hard parts. They hold digital wallets, verify identity, monitor transactions and operate the exact rails an agent needs. They are also building the feature directly into their products. In April 2026, the regulated US exchange Gemini launched “Agentic Trading,” letting a user connect an AI assistant to their account to monitor markets, place orders and apply risk limits, all within boundaries the user sets – the first such tool offered through a regulated exchange. The same model is straightforward to picture in India: a retail user who never learned to actively manage money could simply state a goal and let a supervised agent handle the routine work – shifting small savings, comparing options, paying in tiny amounts. With clear rules, these advanced tools become easy for anyone to use with simple instructions. This is perfect for India as it works to include millions more people in its financial system.

India is well placed to take part in this transformation. It has already shown with UPI that it can build payment systems used at population scale. Its crypto exchanges and developers have spent years building what agent-driven finance needs – digital wallets, identity checks, transaction monitoring and reporting under the rules set by FIU-IND, where over fifty exchanges are now registered. What is missing is regulatory clarity. India’s AI policy and its crypto policy are being shaped on separate tracks, and neither yet answers a basic question: when software makes a payment or a trade, who is accountable, and what rules govern the money it moves? Without answers, Indian users and businesses will end up relying on agent systems built abroad, settling in foreign-currency stablecoins, with the oversight sitting outside India. A measured framework – including a supervised sandbox where agent-driven payments and trading on crypto rails can be tested under the watch of the RBI and FIU-IND – would let India help shape this shift rather than inherit it. The technology is arriving either way.

Relm Insurance Launches ALPHA Policy for Investment Managers Across AI, Biotech, Digital Assets and Other Emerging Sectors

HAMILTON, Bermuda — June 9, 2026: Relm Insurance (‘Relm’), the leading specialty insurer supporting emerging and innovative industries, today announced the launch of ALPHA, a consolidated investment management insurance policy designed for firms operating across emerging asset classes.

Investment managers are increasingly deploying capital into areas such as AI, biotech, fintech, digital assets, and the space economy. Following the earlier release of ALPHAWEB3, which was developed for investment managers operating in blockchain-based and digital asset strategies, Relm has expanded the product into a broader framework designed for firms investing across both emerging and traditional sectors. While the underlying risks remain rooted in established financial lines exposures, many firms now operate across complex structures where insurance solutions can be fragmented, with separate policies covering different parts of the platform. This can create gaps or duplication at the worst possible time, during a claim.

ALPHA has been developed to support investment managers putting capital to work in emerging industries, combining Relm’s underwriting appetite for these sectors with a consolidated policy structure. 

The product includes investment advisor professional liability, fund coverage, management liability, employment practices liability, and crime within a single, integrated framework, with extensions for areas such as pre-claim expenses, public relations costs, and loss mitigation. The policy is structured to align with how these firms operate in practice, where exposures often overlap across advisory, fund, and management activities.

“Investment managers play a critical role in financing the innovative industries that Relm serves,” said Shane Doyle, Relm’s Chief Underwriting Officer. “Supporting the firms that allocate capital into these sectors is, in turn, how we support the industries themselves. The launch of ALPHA, alongside the refresh of ALPHAWEB3, expands Relm’s ability to serve investment managers operating across digital assets and other frontier sectors, with insurance solutions designed to reflect how modern investment platforms manage risk.”

Relm’s approach combines a proprietary policy form with underwriting expertise in emerging sectors, and capacity of up to $5 million across multiple currencies.

The product is designed to support organizations from early-stage managers through to established firms, with underwriting tailored to different strategies, structures, and stages of growth.

OKX launches X-Perps on the Magnificent 7 Stocks, Gold, Silver and Oil for European traders

Amsterdam, June 09th:  OKX, a leading global fintech company and crypto trading platform, today launched 13 new X-Perp markets for traders across Europe, giving retail users direct access to futures on the “Magnificent 7” tech stocks, four major commodities and the world’s biggest indices.

From today, OKX customers in Europe can trade futures on Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla, alongside Gold, Silver, WTI Crude Oil and Brent Crude Oil. SPY and QQQ X-Perps are also available, allowing Europeans to build wealth by offering price exposure to the 500 largest US companies and the 100 largest non-financial Nasdaq companies respectively. On Friday June 12, following its IPO, X-Perps on SpaceX will also become available. All markets are available 24/7, with up to 10x leverage.

Previously, acting on a Fed decision at midnight or a commodity spike over the weekend meant either waiting for markets to open or managing a separate brokerage account. X-Perps remove that constraint. Capital stays on OKX, one account, one pool, giving customers the ability to easily rotate capital from crypto to these new asset classes with the same margin on OKX for the first time.

“European traders are sophisticated. They know exactly what’s moving markets. They watch earnings, Fed decisions, commodity prices, and geopolitical events, but they’ve had no way to act on any of them,” said Erald Ghoos, CEO of OKX Europe. “X-Perps fix that. One account, every market, 24/7. And because we’re fully regulated, our customers get the protections that come with that.”

“Since May 1, X-Perps trading volume has increased by more than 447%. We expect this strong momentum to continue and potentially accelerate as we expand our product offering,” Ghoos added.

While past performance doesn’t guarantee future results, the numbers explain the appetite. SPY has returned 25% over the past 12 months. QQQ has returned 42%. The largest European ETF holds $20 billion in AUM. SPY holds $700 billion. For European retail investors, both indices have been all but out of reach, blocked by regulation. X-Perps are the first practical route in, from inside a MiFID and MiCA-licensed platform.

OKX holds full MiCA, MiFID II and Payment Institution licences in Europe with an EU passport across all EEA member states, enabling regulated exposure to these assets. The MiCA transition period ends on July 1, 2026, meaning that unlicensed exchanges will no longer be able to offer crypto services to customers in the EEA.