IN A time of fractured international trade, it’s easy to assume that large multinationals will be the ones to hold the world together. But in Asia, it’s the small businesses – the family-run exporters, tech-enabled micro-retailers, and fast-moving suppliers – that are proving to be the invisible glue of global commerce.

This isn’t a feel-good narrative. It’s a hard economic reality. Today, micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) make up 95 per cent of all businesses worldwide. In Asia, they’ve become the shock absorbers of international supply chains – enabled to soar above external triggers by a decade of digital transformation, regional cooperation and targeted public-private investment.

Now, as trade tensions and technological decoupling disrupt the rules of the game, it’s time to invert how we think about innovation and growth. Instead of designing systems for the largest players and hoping benefits trickle down, we must start with MSMEs in mind – building technology, financial infrastructure and policy frameworks that serve their cross-border ambitions first. That’s how we’ll unlock inclusive, sustainable growth, and more importantly, resilience.

Asia’s recent economic rise was no accident. It was powered by the ingenuity and diligence of its people, forward-looking government policies that champion entrepreneurship, and an open embrace of multilateral trade. The result: Asia now accounts for 60 per cent of the world’s gross domestic product and 60 per cent of intra-regional trade, according to the International Monetary Fund.

Today, this consensus is under serious challenge. Ongoing tariff face-offs bring unprecedented threats to supply chains, business survival and consumer wellbeing, especially for small businesses. And unlike the past, this is the world’s first-ever global trade clash at a time when many MSMEs are now fairly deeply entrenched in cross-border commerce. They have global exposure, but also face global vulnerabilities.

Yet despite these risks, MSMEs have demonstrated extraordinary adaptability and can also be the quickest to embrace new technologies. During the Covid pandemic, 77 per cent of small businesses in Asia actively adopted new digital tools to stay afloat. These are not legacy players stuck in the past. They are increasingly agile nodes in a fast-changing international network.

Asia leads the world in patent filings and digital experimentation, but the true test is whether this innovation is accessible and usable for small businesses.

Too often, cutting-edge technologies are designed for the scale of multinational banks, retailers or logistics firms. But when engineers and fintechs start with MSMEs in mind – as many have across Asia – the results are transformative: artificial intelligence (AI) tools that automate cross-border payments across hundreds of currencies. Blockchain-based solutions for instant FX settlement. Anti-fraud and anti-money laundering systems that protect micro-entrepreneurs transacting online.

According to IDC, over 50 per cent of medium-sized businesses in Asia are projected to adopt GenAI by 2026. This isn’t just about inclusion, it’s about strategic resilience. When MSMEs can plug directly into trusted, real-time digital infrastructure, they become faster, smarter and safer. That’s good for everyone in the trade ecosystem. Underpinning that is a pragmatism and quickness in innovating and implementing solutions, which have always been the cornerstone for the region’s short-term and long-term success.

The private sector cannot do this alone. The region’s policymakers have been actively building a tapestry of digital connectivity across industries and geographies through public-private partnerships. This effectively brings digitisation resources to SMEs where private markets alone are not enough.

From connecting mobile payment systems across Asean to creating open banking standards and policy sandboxes for AI and privacy-preserving computing, the region has pioneered models of digital collaboration at scale. These structural enablers bring millions of small businesses into global economic flows.

Initiatives like Singapore’s Enterprise Compute Initiative or Thailand’s AI adoption programmes show that even advanced technologies like cloud computing or generative AI can be made available to MSMEs, if there is political will and smart implementation.

In an age of fragmentation, it’s not just about who can move fastest or grow biggest. It’s about who can stay resilient under pressure. And MSMEs have already shown they can do this – if we put the right tools in their hands.

The most resilient economies of the future will be those that equip their small businesses with access to global networks of capital, technology and customers.

At Ant International, we see this firsthand in our partnerships across trade, travel, technology and talent. We continue to invest in trusted AI and digital finance technologies that help the smallest players lower costs, manage risk and unlock cross-border growth. We also work with policymakers, central banks and commercial partners to expand the shared infrastructure needed to power next-generation commerce and continue weaving our tapestry of collaboration.

The writer is chief executive officer of Ant International