Singtel on Tuesday revealed plans to connect its Dash mobile wallet with that of its regional affiliates, starting with Thailand’s AIS from the middle of this year. The Singapore telco plans to progressively expand this service to its other regional associates like India’s Airtel, Indonesia’s Telkomsel and Globe in the Philippines. Cash is still king in Southeast Asia, but may be dethroned sooner rather than later as the region embraces the cashless society using smartphones tied to mobile payment systems, writes Yukako Ono for Nikkei Asian Review. Southeast Asia is the world’s fastest growing Internet region. Nearly four million new users will go online every month in the next five years. According to a Google/Temasek study, total internet users in the region will reach 480 million by 2020 and there are over 700 million mobile internet subscribers in the region.